[open-bibliography] Fwd: News release: Referencing made easy

Mon May 17 15:39:47 UTC 2010

Hi - I'm the project manager for this JISC project

As Graham says, the work we have done integrates RefWorks, a commercial product, with Moodle (which is Open Source). In terms of sharing reference data RefWorks supports publication of references via RSS (something we made use of in the project), and we also developed tools to enable the sharing of references within the Moodle environment by enabling the embedding of an XML representation of the reference into any page, which would then be presented in a human-readable format, with options to export to a variety of formats.

While the project developed these specific tools, it also took a wider look at the area of referencing. In terms of sharing Reference/Citation data in an open format, we looked at RDFa and the Bibliontology, although we didn't use this approach in the end I think this is certainly promising as a mechanism and would love to see it more widely adopted. We also ran an event in January this year which included presentations from Mendeley, Connotea and CiteULike - all of which look at mechanisms for sharing bibliographic data online. We've tried to bring together many of the issues we encountered.

Our upcoming event 'Innovations in Reference Management 2' is scheduled for June 21st in Birmingham UK - it may be of interest to some of this list http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/telstar/2010/05/11/innovations-in-reference-management-2/

Many of the issues we encountered and the solutions we implemented are documented in the draft 'toolkit' (ReMIT) at http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/telstar/remit-toc/ - we are still interested in feedback on this and hope to revise it before a final version is published before the end of the project in July, so if there are any comments please feel free to add them to the toolkit, or send them to me. At the moment there isn't much in there on sharing/publishing reference data so it would be good to know what people might look for in such a toolkit.

Thanks,

Owen

On 17 May 2010, at 15:59, graham wrote:

> On 05/17/10 14:25, Jonathan Gray wrote:
>> This looks very interesting. I wonder whether/how the project
>> currently supports sharing reference/citation data?
> 
> It's through Refworks, which means you need a subscription: paid for by
> many university libraries, but not open to the general public without
> payment.
> 
> See: http://code.google.com/p/telstar/wiki/RefWorks
> 
> Graham
> 
> 
>> 
>> David: do you know whether there are any plans to encourage
>> institutions/researchers to open up reference data? Or anything about
>> the IPR management model? Seems like potentially a big opportunity to
>> share citation data more effectively...
>> 
>> All the best,
>> 
>> Jonathan
>> 
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> 
>> News release
>> 17 May 2010
>> 
>> Referencing made easy
>> 
>> A new piece of software to help students and universities manage
>> academic references more easily has been developed by the Open
>> University and its partners.
>> 
>> Funded by JISC, and made in collaboration with RefWorks, the web-based
>> research management, writing and collaboration tool, the OU has
>> developed MyReferences to simplify referencing.
>> 
>> Lawrie Phipps, programme manager at JISC, said: “Writing up references
>> can be a really time-consuming activity for the student and researcher
>> – but it’s essential to avoid plagiarism, develop robust scholarship
>> and lead the reader to other relevant work.  This resource is one
>> aspect of a huge investment from JISC which aims to spark innovative
>> solutions to issues like referencing that affect people working up and
>> down the country, in order to inspire and help other UK colleges and
>> universities.”
>> 
>> MyReferences integrates tools from the widely-used RefWorks reference
>> management software into the Moodle virtual learning environment which
>> is used in academic institutions across the UK to support online
>> learning.
>> 
>> Nicky Whitsed, director of library services at the OU, said: “For
>> students, this means helping them to adopt good practice in organising
>> and managing references and using citations appropriately in their
>> work. And for universities this new and easy reference management
>> system will help to tackle plagiarism by making referencing easier;
>> encourage information literacy; and help libraries to improve
>> reference management for courses”.
>> 
>> The MyReferences software is open source, making it free for any
>> institution to download, tailor to their own needs and integrate into
>> their own learning environments.
>> 
>> The software is part of the 'technology enhanced learning supporting
>> students to achieve academic rigour' (TELSTAR) project.  Owen
>> Stephens, project manager, said: “These new tools are invaluable to
>> the 21st century educational institution and student. There is an ever
>> increasing wealth of resources available and hence a real need for
>> students, course and programme teams to be able to create, manipulate,
>> organise and store a range of citations and bibliographic references
>> for easy use."
>> 
>> There are already a number of general referencing tools available to
>> students, but MyReferences takes the usability of these tools a step
>> further by integrating them into online courses so the materials
>> students commonly need to reference are already available in the
>> format they need. Students simply select the sources they need to
>> reference, the referencing style their institution requires and then
>> copy and paste the result into their assignment.
>> 
>> Owen continued: “From now until July we’ll be working with other
>> institutions to implement the software, as well as continuing to pilot
>> it with staff and students at the OU. The response we’ve had so far
>> from students and staff alike has been overwhelmingly positive and
>> we’re looking forward to working with more and more organisations in
>> the UK and across the world to spread the benefits of this new
>> referencing tool.”
>> 
>> "RefWorks is proud to be a part of the MyReferences project – it not
>> only provides users with an effective and easy-to-use research
>> management tool, but it takes another step towards educating them
>> about information literacy,” said Colleen Stempien, executive director
>> of operations, RefWorks-COS.  “Any institution that currently
>> subscribes to RefWorks may easily adapt the added Moodle integration
>> functionality using the RefWorks API.”
>> 
>> See a visual demonstration of MyReferences at
>> <http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/telstar/telstar-quick-demonstration/>
>> 
>> Find out more about events planned to share information about TELSTAR
>> and developments in the field of reference management at
>> <http://www.open.ac.uk/telstar/event>
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
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