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Until recent years, a focused and centralized strategy for the annotation, storage and curation of research\ud data is something that has not been widely considered within academic communities. The majority of\ud research data sits, fragmented, on a variety of disk structures (Desktops, network & external hard drives)\ud and is usually managed locally, with little interest paid to policies governing how it is backed up,\ud disseminated and organized for short or long term reuse.\ud Recognition of how current practices and infrastructure present a barrier to research, has resulted in several\ud recent academic programmes which have focused on developing comprehensive frameworks for the\ud management and curation of research data1-3. Many of these frameworks (such as the Archer suite of e-\ud Research tools1), however, are large and complex, and have an overreliance on new and novel technologies\ud making them unwieldy and difficult to support.\ud The paper discusses the development of a simpler framework for the management of research data through\ud its full lifecycle, allowing users to annotate and structure their research in a secure and backed up\ud environment. The infrastructure is being developed as a pilot system and is expected to work with data\ud from approximately a dozen researchers and manage several Terabytes of data. The technical work is a\ud strand of the MaDAM (Manchester Data Management) project at The University of Manchester which is\ud funded by the JISC Managing Research Data Programme.1

This document presents the final results of the phase two summative evaluation of the UKDA-StORe project’s portal repository system. After the completion of the regular funding phase of StORe under the JISC Digital Repositories programme in 2007 the project was granted an extension until mid-2008 to further refine the portal under the name UKDA-StORe. For the regular project a phase one summative evaluation assessed “the technical structure, functionality, design and quality of the demonstrator system, and the appropriateness of the ‘common model’ approach, using workshops to test the system with representative repository users”. It was agreed to conduct a phase two summative evaluation to further assess the development of UKDA-StORe and to complement the findings of the first evaluation phase. The phase two summative evaluation is based on a series of five expert user interviews to evaluate the StORe system in use. In the phase one evaluation it is stated, that “it is probable that a second complementary evaluation phase will be conducted in the future also based on the approach introduced here”. This endeavour could be realised in general, but under other specifications: As the UKDA-StORe extension did not consist of a user base for the evaluator to draw on the approach had to be modified – from user evaluation workshops to qualitative evaluation interviews with domain experts – with the task to evaluate the system in regard to barriers and facilitators to use and usability issues unchanged.

This paper discusses the user-centred development process within the Collaborative Research Events on the Web (CREW) project, funded under the JISC Virtual Research Environments (VRE) programme. After presenting the project, its aims and the functionality\ud of the CREW VRE, we focus on the user engagement approach, grounded in the method of co-realisation. We describe the different research settings and requirements of our three embedded user groups and the respective activities conducted so far. Finally we elaborate on\ud the main challenges of our user engagement approach and end with the project’s next steps.\ud

Recently, ontologies have gained popularity as the means of achieving syntactic and semantic interoperability of data. Ontologies provide machine-readable representations of the elements and relationships between elements within a domain of knowledge. In the bioinformatics community, ontologies have already been successfully used for integrating and standardizing experimental data from sources in the genetic, cognitive and neuroanatomical knowledge domains. The challenges increase, however, when attempting to build ontologies that can be used across different disciplines. This paper, drawn on our experience with the NeuroPsyGrid project, aims to provide a socio-technical account of the challenges of building such an ontology.

To evaluate the demonstrator system and project ‘common model’ in order to make recommendations for future development work. The evaluation will assess the technical structure, functionality, design and quality of the demonstrator system, and the appropriateness of the ‘common model’ approach, using workshops to test the system with representative repository users.

This document presents the final results of the phase one summative evaluation of the StORe project’s pilot demonstrator prototype system. As stated in the ‘Summative Evaluation Plan v1.3’ for WP 5 (see Appendix A), the “evaluation will assess the technical structure, functionality, design and quality of the demonstrator system, and the appropriateness of the ‘common model’ approach, using workshops to test the system with representative repository users”. In the recently completed two year StORe project a social science pilot demonstrator system has been built up and refined according to the stages of work (see http://jiscstore.jot.com/PilotMiddleware) at the UK Data Archive (UKDA). It federates a UKDA source repository and the Research Articles Online institutional output repository (ePrints) of the London School of Economics (LSE), based on the common/generic model, as outlined in the ‘WP 3: Business Analysis’ report. This business analysis report is one base document for the summative evaluation and itself based on data gathered in the ‘WP 2: Survey of Researchers’ (see http://jiscstore.jot.com/SurveyPhase). The summative evaluation consists of a workshop topic guide and a review of the WP 3 business analysis report described in the chapters 2 and 3, both part of deliverable one already presented in two separate reports end of April 2007 (for more details on deliverables see Appendix A). It turned out to be very difficult to commit users to participate in the planned two workshops. In the end one workshop could be conducted with only three users taking part, who not even had been participants in the StORe project before. Due to these circumstances this final report is called phase one, as it is probable that a second complementary evaluation phase will be conducted in the future also based on the approach introduced here. This process and its repercussions are described in detail under ‘Change Management’ in chapter 4. Chapter 5 shows how the workshop session occurred eventually (part of deliverable one) and chapter 6 finally presents the results of the evaluation (deliverables one and two). During the evaluation a close collaboration with the UK Data Archive in Essex was invaluable concerning the appropriate dates for the workshops, the technical prerequisites and demands for the user testing as well as respecting the knowledge and experience towards the pilot and its ongoing development and use.

In this paper, we outline preliminary findings from an ongoing study we have been conducting over the past 18 months of researchers’ use of myExperiment, a Web 2.0-based repository with a focus on social networking around shared research artefacts such as workflows. We present evidence of myExperiment users’ workflow sharing and re-use practices, motivations, concerns and potential barriers. The paper concludes with. a discussion of the implications of these our findings for community formation, diffusion of innovations, emerging drivers and incentives for research practice, and IT systems design.