The end

Sadly, this will be the last JoRD project post. A lot has happened since the start of this project. The active part of the projected finished last February, but ripples of activity have been continuing. There have been more presentations about JoRD at conferences in  Hamburg, Turkey and Helsinki (SWIB13 Hamburg 27th Nov 2013: Journal research data sharing policies: what they tell us about linked data potential,  oral presentation only; IATUL, Helsinki 2nd June 2014. Access to research data: addressing the problem through data sharing policies,  paper; IMCW Antalya Turkey, 24-26 Nov. Abstract only). As well as this activity, we have been quietly working away trying to get  a paper published about Journal Research Data policies, including a model policy that a journal may choose to adopt. Happily, the paper has been accepted by JASIST (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2330-1643), and will be published in due course. Meanwhile, you can read the peer-reviewed version on Nottingham E-Prints (http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/3185/) or here. We have been approached by researchers to know more about the project, and as it has not passed into oblivion, it would suggest that there was a real need for the research and a desire for the product that would entail. Here is a brief summary of the project: The Journal Research Data (JoRD) project was formed to test the feasibility of developing a service that would collate and summarise the policies of academic journals about data which is associated with the articles that they publish. In order to complete that task:

• A large sample of journals were examined and their data policies analysed
• All the stakeholders concerned were consulted
• Literature about journal data policies was reviewed
• Business cases were explored
• All the gathered data was analysed and recommendations were made about the prospective service

The main outcome of the project was a feasibility study report which was presented to Jisc, but it also generated presentations and posters at six international conferences. The promotion of the project in that way has contributed to its impact, the blog is still being viewed and occasional requests for more information are still being received at the CRC. The issue of data management is becoming increasingly more important, and the objectiveness of the research, taking the views of publishers, researchers and academic library staff into consideration gave the project value and validity. The project was a success because its thorough evaluation based on first hand evidence resulted in a workable recommendation for a trial JoRD service.  Attached to this blog there are the documents, or extracts from the documents, which show the evidence collected and the analysis that took place.