A mandate to self archive? The role of open access institutional repositories

This paper argues that the best way to achieve major improvements in scholarly communication in the short and medium term is to make it mandatory to deposit research papers in open access institutional repositories. This is what the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report of 2004 on scientific publishing recommended. The paper defines what open access repositories are and explains why they should be institutional. It also deals with question of what should be deposited in institutional repositories and why these improve scholarly communication. It then deals with the issue of mandating deposition: why deposition should be mandatory, who should mandate deposition and who should carry out deposition. The paper concludes with an analysis of the wider implications of mandating deposition in institutional repositories and a summary of the existing situation in the UK and elsewhere. The paper discusses the Select Committee report and the UK Government response in relation to institutional repositories.

Cooperative Design, Cooperative Science: Investigating Collaborative Research through Design with Floracaching

This dissertation presents a case study of collaborative research through design with Floracaching, a gamified mobile application for citizen science biodiversity data collection. One contribution of this study is the articulation of collaborative research through design (CRtD), an approach that blends cooperative design approaches with the research through design methodology (RtD). Collaborative research through design is thus defined as an iterative process of cooperative design, where the collaborative vision of an ideal state is embedded in a design. Applying collaborative research through design with Floracaching illustrates how a number of cooperative techniques—especially contextual inquiry, prototyping, and focus groups—may be applied in a research through design setting. Four suggestions for collaborative research through design (recruit from a range of relevant backgrounds; take flexibility as a goal; enable independence and agency; and, choose techniques that support agreement or consensus) are offered to help others who wish to experiment with this new approach. Applying collaborative research through design to Floracaching yielded a new prototype of the application, accompanied by design annotations in the form of framing constructs for designing to support mobile, place-based citizen science activities. The prototype and framing constructs, which may inform other designers of similar citizen science technologies, are a second contribution of this research.

Early post-fledgling survival in a fragmented population of a tropical cooperative breeding passerine

During the last years tropical forest has been a target of intense study especially due to its recent big scale destruction. Although a lot still needs to be explored, we start realizing how negative can the impact of our actions be for the ecosystem. Subsequently, the living community have been developing strategies to overcome this problem avoiding bottlenecks or even extinctions. Cooperative breeding (CB) has been recently pointed out as one of those strategies. CB is a breeding system where more than two individuals raise one brood. In most of the cases, extra individuals are offspring that delay their dispersal and independent breeding what allows them to help their parents raising their siblings in the subsequent breeding season. Such behavior is believed to be due, per example, to the lack of mates or breeding territories (ecological constraints hypothesis), a consequence of habitat fragmentation and/or disturbance. From this point, CB is easily promoted by a higher reproductive success of group vs pairs or single individuals. Accordingly, during this thesis I explore the early post-fledging survival of a cooperative breeding passerine, namely the impact of individual/habitat quality in its survival probability during the dependence period of the chicks. Our study species is the Cabanis’s greenbul (Phyllastrephus cabanisi), a medium-sized, brownish passerine, classified within the Pycnonotidae family. It is found over part of Central Africa in countries such as Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique and Kenya, inhabiting primary and secondary forests, as well as woodland of various types up to 2700m of altitude. Previous studies have concluded that PC is a facultative cooperative breeder. This study was conducted in Taita Hills (TH) at the Eastern Arc Mountains (EAM), a chain of mountains running from Southeast Kenya to the South of Tanzania. TH comprises an area of 430 ha and has been suffering intense deforestation reflecting 98% forest reduction over the last 200 years. Nowadays its forest is divided in fragments and our study was based in 5of those fragments. We access the post-fledging survival through radio-telemetry. The juvenile survey was done through the breeding females in which transmitters were placed with a leg-loop technique. Ptilochronology is consider to be the study of feather growth bars and has been used to study the nutritional state of a bird. This technique considers that the feather growth rate is positively proportional to the individual capability of ingesting food and to the food availability. This technique is therefore used to infer for individual/habitat quality. Survival was lowest during the first 5 days post-fledging representing 53.3%. During the next 15 days, risk of predation decreased with only 14.3% more deceased individuals. This represents a total of only 33% survived individuals in the end of the 50 days. Our results showed yet a significant positive relationship between flock size and post-fledging survival as well as between ptilochronology values and post-fledgling survival. In practice, these imply that on this population, as bigger the flock, as greater the post fledging survival and that good habitat quality or good BF quality, will lead to a higher juvenile survival rate. We believe that CB is therefore an adaptive behaviour to the lack of mates/breeding territory originated from the mass forest destruction and disturbance. Such results confirms the critical importance of habitat quality in the post-fledging survival and, for the first time, demonstrates how flock size influences the living probability of the juveniles and therefore how it impacts the (local) population dynamics of this species. In my opinion, future research should be focus in disentangle individual and habitat quality from each other and verify which relationship exist between them. Such study will allow us to understand which factor has a stronger influence in the post-fledging survival and therefore redirect our studies in that direction. In order to confirm the negative impact of human disturbance and forest fragmentation, it would be of major relevance to compare the reproductive strategies and reproductive success of populations living in intact forests and disturbed patches.

'Cooperative Automated worm Response and Detection ImmuNe ALgorithm (CARDINAL) inspired by T-cell Immunity and Tolerance'

The role of T-cells within the immune system is to confirm and assess anomalous situations and then either respond to or tolerate the source of the effect. To illustrate how these mechanisms can be harnessed to solve real-world problems, we present the blueprint of a T-cell inspired algorithm for computer security worm detection. We show how the three central T-cell processes, namely T-cell maturation, differentiation and proliferation, naturally map into this domain and further illustrate how such an algorithm fits into a complete immune inspired computer security system and framework.

Precoder Detection for Cooperative Decode-and-Forward Relaying in OFDMA Systems

We consider an LTE network where a secondary user acts as a relay, transmitting data to the primary user using a decode-and-forward mechanism, transparent to the base-station (eNodeB). Clearly, the relay can decode symbols more reliably if the employed precoder matrix indicators (PMIs) are known. However, for closed loop spatial multiplexing (CLSM) transmit mode, this information is not always embedded in the downlink signal, leading to a need for effective methods to determine the PMI. In this thesis, we consider 2x2 MIMO and 4x4 MIMO downlink channels corresponding to CLSM and formulate two techniques to estimate the PMI at the relay using a hypothesis testing framework. We evaluate their performance via simulations for various ITU channel models over a range of SNR and for different channel quality indicators (CQIs). We compare them to the case when the true PMI is known at the relay and show that the performance of the proposed schemes are within 2 dB at 10% block error rate (BLER) in almost all scenarios. Furthermore, the techniques add minimal computational overhead over existent receiver structure. Finally, we also identify scenarios when using the proposed precoder detection algorithms in conjunction with the cooperative decode-and-forward relaying mechanism benefits the PUE and improves the BLER performance for the PUE. Therefore, we conclude from this that the proposed algorithms as well as the cooperative relaying mechanism at the CMR can be gainfully employed in a variety of real-life scenarios in LTE networks.

Reproductive competition triggers mass eviction in cooperative banded mongooses.

In many vertebrate societies, forced eviction of group members is an important determinant of population structure, but little is known about what triggers eviction. Three main explanations are: (i) the reproductive competition hypothesis, (ii) the coercion of cooperation hypothesis, and (iii) the adaptive forced dispersal hypothesis. The last hypothesis proposes that dominant individuals use eviction as an adaptive strategy to propagate copies of their alleles through a highly structured population. We tested these hypotheses as explanations for eviction in cooperatively breeding banded mongooses (Mungos mungo), using a 16-year dataset on life history, behaviour and relatedness. In this species, groups of females, or mixed-sex groups, are periodically evicted en masse. Our evidence suggests that reproductive competition is the main ultimate trigger for eviction for both sexes. We find little evidence that mass eviction is used to coerce helping, or as a mechanism to force dispersal of relatives into the population. Eviction of females changes the landscape of reproductive competition for remaining males, which may explain why males are evicted alongside females. Our results show that the consequences of resolving within-group conflict resonate through groups and populations to affect population structure, with important implications for social evolution.

Open Access Repositories & Scholarly Publication

This presentation briefly covers some of the issues around Open Access as it pertains to institutional repositories in the UK higher educational sector. It includes an overview of the current activities of SHERPA, along with the benefits, concerns and potential resolutions of issues in the open access sector. Some speculation as to future trends and developments in scholarly publishing and open access is included. The presentation is in no way comprehensive, and is intended to give an overview of the subject to a general audience who will be engaged with academic and scholarly publishing on a variety of levels.

Rumours, Bargains and Lies: How to advocate Open Access repositories more successfully

In this workshop seminar delivered twice at the CoFHE/UCR 2006 conference the author explored aspects relating to successful advocacy of Open Access and repositories. Areas covered included preconceptions on the part of academics and support staff, as well as models of implementation of an advocacy programme. A large portion of the material pulls together experience and narrative evidence from the SHERPA Consortium partners and repository administrators; with a particular focus on their successes and failures and the lessons that have been learned.

A (More) Livable Community: Community, Cooperative Economics, and Resistance At A Student Housing Cooperative In College Park

Radical thinkers and activists have put forth “building community” as a political alternative, but what does “building community” actually entail? This thesis examines how a student cohousing group in College Park builds community in a rapidly changing college town. The group was founded to help house low-income tenants in the face of increasingly unaffordable housing. I ask how the group creates organizational structures and personal relationships that give rise to alternative housing opportunities. I examine how community shapes, and is shaped by, features of cohousing such as democratic decision-making and cooperative economics. I give particular attention to tensions that occur within the cooperative due to faults in democratic decision-making, the ability to perform cooperative duties, and the demographic makeup of the cooperative. Finally, I ask what transformative features, if any, the community possesses in the face of the city’s development.

'Cooperative Automated worm Response and Detection ImmuNe ALgorithm (CARDINAL) inspired by T-cell Immunity and Tolerance'

The role of T-cells within the immune system is to confirm and assess anomalous situations and then either respond to or tolerate the source of the effect. To illustrate how these mechanisms can be harnessed to solve real-world problems, we present the blueprint of a T-cell inspired algorithm for computer security worm detection. We show how the three central T-cell processes, namely T-cell maturation, differentiation and proliferation, naturally map into this domain and further illustrate how such an algorithm fits into a complete immune inspired computer security system and framework.

Can open access repositories and peer-reviewed journals coexist?

It is often assumed that open access repositories and peer-reviewed journals are in competition with each other and therefore will in the long term be unable to coexist. This paper takes a critical look at that assumption. It draws on the available evidence of actual practice which indicates that coexistence is possible at least in the medium term. It discusses possible future models of publication and dissemination which include open access, repositories, peer review and journals. The paper suggests that repositories and journals may coexist in the long term but that both may have to undergo significant changes. Important areas where changes need to occur include: widespread deployment of repository infrastructure, development of version identification standards, development of value-added features, new business models, new approaches to quality control and adoption of digital preservation as a repository function.

In the kingdom of the blind: successfully implementing institutional repositories in the UK and the SHERPA Partnership experience

This paper takes an overview of the work of SHERPA team and the SHERPA Partnership institutions in the area of developing, populating and maintaining institutional open access repositories. Crucial to this work has been the development of mutually supporting and enabling Partnership community, something which has been now recognised as needed by institutions who lie outside of it. To this end SHERPA is involved in efforts to support the individuals and institutions across the UK and Europe whom are engaging with the open access agenda on a practical level; through setting up community networks and disseminating experience. Key in the experience of the Partnership has been the role of advocacy of open access and repositories to the institutional research community. Whilst this experience has been unique to each institution, there are many shared lessons and best practice that the Partnership has recently reflected on, and that are articulated within this paper. Finally brief coverage on some of the vital community tools developed and maintained by SHERPA, and reflections on the evolving direction of open access in the UK are made.

Communities in Collaboration: Building the Empire Archival Discovery Cooperative

Presentation from the MARAC conference in Pittsburgh, PA on April 14–16, 2016. S24; - Pittsburgh Pop-Up #2.