JISC Collections

Phase One of KB+ started in August 2011 and will run through to August 2012.

In Phase One it is our intention to put in place the infrastructure - technical, data, legal, financial - to support the KB+ service on an ongoing basis.

The central area of the diagram above shows the seven key deliverables of Phase One of KB+

1. KB+ platform with user interface to allow academic institutions, suppliers, publishers and others to navigate, manage and manipulate data, supported by access management and permission tools.
2. Verified, accurate and up-to-date publication information for NESLi2, JISC eCollections, SHEDL and WHEEL agreements in KBART format, suitable for use by link-resolvers
3. Subscription management information – such as post-cancellation access entitlement information, contact information, access management records.
4. Licences in machine readable formats for NESLi2, major JISC Collections and major non-JISC Collections agreements
5. Integrated usage statistics in machine readable format for NESLi2 publishers and other publishers stored within the Journals Usage Statistics Portal.
6. Alerting services covering renewals, opt outs, service availability and disruption.
7. Workflow management tools related to the selection, review, renewal and cancellation of publications.

Those seven key deliverables will be underpinned by work in a number of areas:

1. Data - we're focussing on improving the quality of ERM information relevant to the UK academic community that is currently available. The intention is to provide information that is structured, accurate, authoritative, validated and, just as important, timely

2. Standards - whilst the ERM landscape is well served by standards and recommended practices - COUNTER, KBART, ONIX - for the presentation and exchange of ERM information. However, they are often inconsisently implemented or ignored. KB+ will adopt and implement such standards and support and encourage the adoption and implementation of such standards by stakeholders such as publishers, academic institutions, systems vendors and subscription agents.

3. Interoperability - the interest in data and standards is based upon the belief that if data can be exchanged and used across multiple systems for multiple purposes then we can start to address the inefficient duplication of time and energy by various stakeholders in populating and maintaining numerous knowledge bases.

4. Shared activity - KB+ is a shared service. This concept of shared service includes not only a shared infrastructure for the benefit of all academic institutions, but importantly the idea that if the efforts of libraries can be directed not just towards the maintenance of their own institutional instance of a knowledge base, or their vendor's knowledge base, but towards a centrally provided knowledge base, then there should be benefits to all.

5. Business model - KB+ is a project to build a sustainable service for the future. The project team will be working with all stakeholders to investigate and implement an appropriate business model for the future.

6. Legal model - closely linked to the work on business models is the need to put in place an appropriate legal infrastructure to underpin the service. With many sources of data and potential tensions between the wish to make information openly available and the need to protect that which is commercially confidential or private, the project needs to have policies and procedures in place to ensure it can function properly.

As well as starting to address the inefficient duplication of staff time and effort spent on knowledge bases,  KB+ will also seek to address the inefficient duplication of data by various systems and services employed by institutions.

Wherever possible KB+ will seek to bring together information from existing sources and authority files, e.g. JUSP, JISC Collections & publishers, rather than create new silos of duplicate data.

This approach, coupled with the commitment to standards and interoperability, and mediation by the KB+ project team and the wider academic community, should increase the amount of information that is available via the service, but allow KB+ to address more needs of the academic community.