In 2018, the Library and Information Services (LIS) was tasked by the Vice-Rector: Research, Innovation and Internationalisation, Prof Corli Witthuhn, to investigate possible solutions in providing access to and support for digital scholarship at the University of the Free State, in order to support changes in scholarly and scientific work today. Scholarly practices across a wide range of disciplines have become deeply and irrevocably changed by the application of information technology (IT). Digital scholarship refers to those IT capabilities that enhances research capabilities. It accelerates the research process, and increases the opportunities for local, national and international collaboration, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research.
The rapid development in technology and the research environment has changed how we do many things. Data-intensive research and open science are no longer niche areas. It has also become commonplace for funders and journals to ask for the data behind findings to ensure replicable, verifiable science. And the University of the Free State recognised that computational tools, IT and open science will be playing an increasingly important role in research and scholarship. We want to support our researchers to utilise this technology better so that we can provide our research community with a research advantage.
At this point, our ICT Services had already investigated eResearch support for our researchers. They had a well-established High-performance Computing (HPC) unit and an office dedicated to investigating new and innovative technologies that could be used in eResearch. After much discussion with all the relevant role players and benchmarking exercises, it was decided that the Library's investigation would focus on 'digital scholarship'.
So from 2018 to 2019 the Library connected with researchers from all the faculties at the University of the Free State. What we wanted to know was: what digital tools are they using in their research? Did they feel supported to use digital tools in their research? Did they know about all the research support provided by the University in a digital environment? What more could the institution provide in terms of research support? See our interview schedule.
During the investigation we looked at infrastructure, support services, skills development, innovation, digitisation, and teaching and learning applications of digital scholarship. We wanted to ensure that the entire University community benefited from future services and we connected with the directors of other research support services and units to discuss this. And we continue to collaborate with ICT Services, Directorate: Research Development (DRD), the Postgraduate School (PGS), Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL), and Internationalisation. The Deans of faculties were also consulted and informed about the project.
There were also benchmarking exercises. Before the Library received the mandate to investigate support for digital scholarship, the Library management visited the University of Singapore's Library for a more general benchmarking exercise. Here they saw the benefits of a university library assisting in providing digital scholarship support, and an opportunity for our Library to expand our services and collaboration with other divisions at the University. And so we visited local universities with similar services: University of Cape Town, University of the Witwatersrand, University of Pretoria and North-West University. Some desktop benchmarking was done with Monash University, University of Melbourne, University of Edinburgh, Oxford University and again with the National University of Singapore. For our benchmarking, we looked at what these services were called (for example eResearch or digital scholarship), reporting structure and management team, policies and governance, collaborations and partnerships, infrastructure, services, skills development and training, and funding. See our interview schedule for the local visits.
What we discovered during our interviews with researchers was that they knew there was much to offer in terms of services and support for their research activities, but where to find it, and who to ask? They wanted a strong online presence for guidance, collaboration opportunities, spaces for sharing, but consistently also commented that they would like a physical hub where they could avoid distractions and concentrate on their research. They wanted a "haven" with an "inspiring atmosphere", a "quiet workspace". And, of course, access to technologies that they might not be able to afford on their own. What it came down to was that researchers were looking for dedicated support for their research projects, much like the support teaching and learning at the University enjoys from CTL. They want information, guidance, training and services online and in person. They want online and physical collaborative platforms. They want a one-stop-shop where they can find the computing power, software, and data support they need for their particular projects. And that is where the Digital Scholarship Centre can come in and help researchers navigate this landscape of support services and tools at the University of the Free State. The Centre can help throughout the research cycle: from the planning stages of a research project, where a researcher needs to acquire equipment, to data collection and analysis in a digital world, to preservation of research and publication in a new scholarly communications environment.
So after our interviews with researchers, deans and heads of departments and divisions, we had recommendations for the Centre that was presented at a workshop late in 2019 with the Rector, Vice-Rector: Research, Innovation and Internationalisation and available deans and heads of departments and divisions, as well as researchers. Here are a few of those initial recommendations:
After the 2019 workshop, the Rector, Prof Francis Petersen, agreed for a pilot for the Centre in 2020, funded by the University's Integrated Transformation Plan (ITP). And so the Digital Scholarship Centre was born. It is a partnership between the Library and Information Services, ICT Services and Directorate: Research Development, all represented in a work group established for the pilot. Currently we have a website, extended LibGuides and a strong social media presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
The goal of the Centre is to expand the capacity of the university research community to create and share new kinds of Scholarship. The University has infrastructure and expertise to support a variety of research projects, across disciplines, that involve technology. The Centre brings together faculty and staff with a one-stop-shop to the many resources available at the University. That means that for accessible, consistent and discoverable support for researchers in the digital environment, the Centre is a single point to discover, request and use research support services already available at the University, connecting researchers with the appropriate service or individual. The Centre also coordinates and facilitates custom needs.
A bit more about our current services. Working in a digital environment often means using resources and expertise that are distributed around the University. The Centre works to maintain awareness of all relevant resources and can assist with connection and coordination. We provide information, guidance, training and support services for digital scholarship:
Also listed on our website under services is a link to the eResearch support provided by ICT Services, specifically the High-performance Computing unit. If you're wondering, an HPC system is a collection (cluster) of computers connected together through a fast computer network. A HPC enables researchers to use multiple computers together, to solve a computational problem. This system also allows a researcher to solve a large analysis on a remote system, freeing up the researcher's computer for other operations. The HPC is used to perform massive computer simulations or calculations in a timely manner, which is virtually impossible to perform on a single desktop computer.
Our HPC unit has over 300 researcher accounts from 30 different departments. Most of the departments fall under the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, but there are also users from the Faculty of Health Sciences and, in 2018, the first researcher from the Faculty of Humanities started using the HPC. As an example of the impact that the HPC can have on research, is a research group consisting of researchers from the Humanities (Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, German and French) collaborating with researchers in the Department of Mathematical Statistics and Actuarial Sciences. A quantitative approach to language comparison was suggested. In the study, the researchers had to perform 13 different statistical analysis on 195 different languages (over 8 billion words). The principal investigator could have done these analysis on her computer, but it would have taken an estimated 54 days, during which time she would not have been able to use her computer effectively and most likely would have suffered interruptions (such as load shedding). After modifying a small portion of her statistical analysis and running it on the HPC, she was able to retrieve the initial results within eight hours.
Our HPC has extensive technical knowledge and experience through years of engagement with the research community, they follow international standards and keep up with trends in eResearch. Their services include assisting newcomers with training, technical documentation and referrals where needed; automation of research processes, e.g. writing scripts to perform functions; software optimisation through understanding hardware features ad performing software compilation accordingly; system design ad maintenance; system operations, e.g. job scheduling to ensure fair sharing of resources among researchers using the HPC; and training in HPC usage, Linux, and more. I will leave you to look at the computational capacity and software available at HPC on our website, as the list is long!
I would also recommend that you take a look at our DSC's LibGuides where we provide an updated list of research support at the University, share digital tools that can be used by researchers, provide digital preservation information, provide guides on creating digital content, and our latest, an online event toolkit ... because COVID.
The DSC has been involved in many projects already, but we would like to highlight a few. We collaborated with the Library and Information Services Teaching and Learning sub-division and the Centre for Teaching and Learning to set up an OER platform, create a guide for OERs at the University, and create templates for OER content.
We are piloting online event software in collaboration with UFS Marketing and Communication, hence using Microsoft Teams Live Events (the public option) for our Open Access Week 2020. We collaborated with our Centre for Universal Access and Disability Support (CUADS) to acquire assistive technologies for CUADS students. And we've started more dedicated support services for research data management, including creating a research data policy for the University and setting up figshare as our data repository.
So, that was quite a mouthful! We have so many plans for the future. Our most immediate plans are to get together a steering committee with a strong academic presence to help us determine the future of the DSC. And to submit our business plan to the ITP committees. Much to do.
We hope to see you on our Twitter feed and Facebook page in future and we welcome your questions and comments to dsc@ufs.ac.za.
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