Newsletters: Issue 2, November 2013

Are HE Institutions Sharing More?

The HE Equipment Landscape Study is being delivered as part of the RCUK Equipment database project and aims to understand which HE institutions have an equipment database, identifying needs for development support of databases and to establish evidence of the early impact of the RCUK equipment guidelines. It is hoped the study will provide a summary of the UK HE landscape around asset management and equipment databases and examples of the impact on collaborations around equipment. Thank you to all those who have contributed so far. We would like to hear from those involved in equipment database management and/or finance departments looking at improvements to asset management as a result of the new equipment guidelines. To participate please get in touch.

Equipment sharing contract templates

Universities from the Association of University Legal Practitioners have been working together to produce draft contract templates for use when “sharing” equipment. Led by University of Cambridge with support from Universities of Southampton, Bristol, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Manchester they have developed two templates one for equipment loans and another for facilities access and services which should be able to be used in many of the scenarios for equipment sharing between institutions. These will be available in the new year and we will provide you the link in our next newsletter.

Making Data Discoverable Workshop

On 25th October we hosted our first “open data” technical workshop. The workshop focussed on providing attendees with the technical knowledge to be able to create simple open data and make it available for aggregation to equipment.data. Sessions included basic RDF, developing an Organisational Profile Document (OPD), auto-discovery, and the principles of data aggregation. The workshop was well received with many attendees feeling they were taking away new knowledge and skills. If you are interested in learning about open data and how it is used in enabling contribution to equipment.data, or would like to attend a future workshop, please get in touch.

Organisational Profile Document (OPD) validation tool launch

Part of the goal of equipment.data is to make the service sustainable. This means allowing you to make corrections to the metadata (like your license, organisation logo, etc) with minimal interaction with our staff. This is a work in progress but in time, we will use the OPD to automatically update this information along with the equipment and facilities listings.

The autodiscovery allows anybody to follow a trial of authority from your homepage, through the OPD and to the data document. This increases the trust in the data without requiring expensive human maintenance and oversight. It may also be used by other data.ac.uk services in the future to discover other authoritative datasets from your organisation e.g. outcomes including research data and publications, lists of experts or official social network profiles. Click here for information on how to set up your own OPD or to check an institutions OPD try out the OPD Checker and let us know your thoughts.

Russell Group Open Data “Road Map” development

A recent special meeting at the Russell Group explored early activities that would contribute to the development of an open data road map for the Russell Group of universities. The aim of the road map will be to improve the understanding and the application of open data so it can be easily embedded within institutions. Early items include identifying skills requirements, appropriate datasets e.g. outcomes, implications for research data management, and opportunities to exploit current developing infrastructure such as equipment.data. We will follow this development with interest!

equipment.data Vendor Engagement Strategy

The main focus for the Vendor Engagement Strategy will be working with vendors in the adoption of the UNIQUIP Publishing Standard in proprietary systems - embedding a sector standard and harmonising how we publish research equipment information. At the same time this activity will look to establish process improvements in how the sector manages asset information and improving the asset data lifecycle through best practice. We will be publishing more information on activity under this important strand of the project in the coming months.