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Friday, July 28, 2006

JISC's draft strategy open for comment

JISC has released its Draft Strategy 2007-2009 for public comment. Excerpt:

3.8. JISC envisages continuing to develop the two JISC National Data Centres (Edina and MIMAS) as primary service-partners for a range of content and production services. JISC will also seek to improve access to content and resources through a range of resource discovery services and through support for open access and a range of other business models....

Aim Three: To support the uptake and effective use of e-research....Priorities and Key Deliverables to meet Aim Three: In collaboration with the Research Councils provide a robust, trustworthy, secure, interoperable and scalable infrastructure for the transmission, storage, sharing, accessibility and dissemination of research data and outputs (July 2009)....

4.10.ii. [JISC puts a] strong emphasis...on open standards. This is sometimes confused with a recommendation to use open source, but open standards support interoperability between systems whether commercial or open source and, where available and broadly adopted, allow institutions to mix and match products of either type and to replace products without high switching costs. The approach to open standards is not limited to software and systems; the JISC makes recommendations to the supplier communities about standards, for example for digitisation of primary resources, in order to increase interoperability and to allow the use of resources in a range of technical environments....The commitment to openness also extends to the JISC’s interest in supporting the open access agenda....

5.15. The JISC works within a coherent and complex set of regional, national and international partnerships. These development partners are crucial to the JISC being able to achieve its objectives, in particular its underlying agenda to support the use of open standards and open access.

If you have comments, send them to strategy@jisc.ac.uk by September 25, 2006. JISC will publish the final version of its strategy in November or December.