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This article, inspired by JUBILEE project fieldwork, is influenced by van Leeuwen and Leeuw’s work on the growing negative attitude towards market research. While the JUBILEE team, as academic researchers, were not making a sales pitch, they were trying to sell the project to putative participants. Issues discussed include length – and degree of difficulty - of questionnaire; how to sell a questionnaire; and how to identify key prospects for interviews and focus groups. Through the experiences gained, the JUBILEE researchers were able to identify key points of good fieldwork practice in relation to the issues discussed.

These proceedings capture the content of the third Witness Seminar hosted by Northumbria University’s School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences. It built on the success of our two previous witness seminars, in terms of its format and style, but was also different in some important ways. Firstly, it represented the final event of a 3-year Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded research project – Accelerating positive change in e-records management (AC+erm); secondly, the seminars took a series of questions, rather than articles, as their starting point; and thirdly, it was much shorter, lasting only half a day. Although it was the final AC+erm project event, and therefore show cased some of the project’s outputs, the sessions and discussions were deliberately designed to revolve around the broader context of research and development in records and information management.

Every day we are mercilessly bombarded by emails offering to publish our work in journals of all shades and hues: from the ‘pay for publication’ vanity publishers to the subscription-based traditional journals. So why on earth would we need another journal? What are we playing at?\ud As editors of this journal our long term goal is to be instrumental in enabling the development of an effective and accepted paradigm for evidence-based information systems (EBIS): providing evidence of its value and impact on information systems practice. Drawing on definitions from the health field (Muir Gray, 1997; Sackett, Rosenberg, Gray, Haynes, & Richardson, 1996) we define EBIS as “an approach to decision making in the design, adoption and implementation of information systems that uses the best evidence available, from both practitioner expertise and systematic research, in consultation with all stakeholders”. In 2013, we argued that to achieve EBIS the information systems (IS) community needed to adopt a seven point agenda to provide the foundations for EBIS (B. J. Oates, Wainwright, & Edwards, 2013). Table 1 develops this call and includes an eighth action ‘building the community’.

This collaborative research data management planning project (hereafter the RDMP project) sought to help a collaborative group of researchers working on an EU FP7 staff exchange project (hereafter the EU project) to define and implement good research data management practice by developing an appropriate DMP and supporting systems and evaluating their initial implementation. The aim was to "improve practice on the ground" through more effective and appropriate systems, tools/solutions and guidance in managing research data. The EU project (MATSIQEL - (Models for Ageing and Technological Solutions For Improving and Enhancing the Quality of Life), funded under the Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme, is accumulating expertise for the mathematical and computer modelling of ageing processes with the aim of developing models which can be implemented in technological solutions (e.g. monitors, telecare, recreational games) for improving and enhancing quality of life.1 Marie Curie projects do not fund research per se, so the EU project has no resources to fund commercial tools for research data management. Lead by Professor Maia Angelova, School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences (SCEIS) at Northumbria University, it comprises six work packages involving researchers at Northumbria and in Australia, Bulgaria, Germany, Mexico and South Africa. The RDMP project focused on one of its work packages (WP4 Technological Solutions and Implementation) with some reference to another work package lead by the same person at Northumbria University (WP5 Quality of Life).\ud \ud The RDMP project‟s innovation was less about the choice of platform/system, as it began with existing standard office technology, and more about how this can be effectively deployed in a collaborative scenario to provide a fit-for-purpose solution with useful and usable support and guidance. It built on the success of the Datum for Health project by taking it a stage further, moving from a solely health discipline to an interdisciplinary context of health, social care and mathematical/computer modelling, and from a Postgraduate Research Student context to an academic researcher context, with potential to reach beyond the University boundaries. In addition, since the EU project is re-using data from elsewhere as well as creating its own data; a wide range of RDM issues were addressed. The RDMP project assessed the transferability of the DATUM materials and the tailored DATUM DMP.

The article focuses on the three-year project being undertaken by Northumbria University in Northumbria, England and funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (ANRH) named as AC+erm. The AC+erm project is a qualitative study composed of three main phases including a comprehensive Systematic Literature Review, an investigation of the three aspects of designing an architecture for electronic records management (ERM), and distribution of findings. The primary data from selected experts are gathered through the Delphi technique8, developed by the Rand Corp. in the U.S., to formulate an opinion on the research topic. Further, it provides short analysis of the issues associated with Web 2.0 and cloud computing technologies..

The AC+erm project aims to investigate and critically explore issues and practical strategies for accelerating positive change in electronic records management. The project’s focus is on designing an organisational-centred architecture from three perspectives: people, process and technology. This paper introduces the project, describes the methodology (a systematic literature review, e-Delphi studies and colloquia) and presents solutions for improving ERM developed from the people and process e-Delphi responses. ERM is particularly challenging and the solutions offered by the Delphi participants are numerous, and range in scale and complexity. The only firm conclusion that one can draw is that the majority of the solutions are people-focussed ones. The Cynefin framework is introduced as one approach for providing a conceptual overview to our findings on ERM. The sample solutions presented in this paper provide a toolkit of ‘probes’ and ‘interventions’ for practical application in organisations.

The AC+erm project aims to investigate and critically explore issues and practical strategies for accelerating positive change in electronic records management. The project’s focus is on designing an organisational-centred architecture from three perspectives: people, process and technology. This paper introduces the project, describes the methodology (a systematic literature review, e-Delphi studies and colloquia) and presents solutions for improving ERM developed from the people and process e-Delphi responses. ERM is particularly challenging and the solutions offered by the Delphi participants are numerous, and range in scale and complexity. The only firm conclusion that one can draw is that the majority of the solutions are people-focussed ones. The Cynefin framework is introduced as one approach for providing a conceptual overview to our findings on ERM. The sample solutions presented in this paper provide a toolkit of ‘probes’ and ‘interventions’ for practical application in organisations.

These proceedings capture the content of the second Witness Seminar hosted by Northumbria University’s School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences. It followed the success of the first witness seminar in terms of its format and style but differed in that it focused on one topic - managing email and other electronic communications technologies from a records perspective. As before the witnesses were invited to share their views and opinions on a specific aspect taking as their starting point a pertinent published article(s). Three seminars explored the business, people and technology perspectives of email and e-communications, asking the following questions: What are the records management implications and challenges of doing business electronically? Are people the problem and the solution? Is technology the problem or panacea? The final seminar, 'Futurewatch', focused on moving forward, exploring new ways of working, potential new technologies and what records professionals and others need to keep on their radar screens.

JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee, established a User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework to investigate and profile the use of electronic information services within higher education in the United Kingdom. This article discusses aspects of the methodology of the Framework, and preliminary findings from the first annual cycle of the Framework. Findings are based on interactions with 1500 users, including academic staff, LIS staff, and students. Executed through 3 strands, the framework methodology uses an array of quantitative and qualitative approaches to lend a variety of insights into user behaviour with EIS, factors that encourage the use of EIS, and those that act as barriers to the effective integration of EIS into the learning experience.

JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee, establishes a User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework to investigate and profile the use of electronic information services within higher education in the United Kingdom. This article discusses aspects of the methodology of the Framework, and preliminary findings from the first annual cycle of the framework. Findings are based on interactions with 1500 users, including academic staff, library and information service (LIS) staff, and students. Executed through three strands, the Framework methodology uses an array of quantitative and qualitative approaches to lend a variety of insights into user behaviour and electronic information services (EIS), factors that encourage the use of EIS and those that act as barriers to the effective integration of EIS into the learning experience.