STIP Meeting

May 4, 1999

Welcome and Introductions

Chuck Morgan welcomed everyone to the STIP meeting, shared imminent organizational changes at OSTI to be effective mid-May (see organization chart), and did a quick review of the agenda and logistics. He also formally announced the retirement of Bill (Buck) Buchanan effective April 30, 1999, but pledged continued support from the other OSTI STIP team members, and introduced two OSTI staff with new responsibilities relevant to STIP activities: Lynn Davis, E-Link Product Manager, and Rita Hohenbrink, E-Link technical specialist. He noted that the STIP collaboration is a successful partnership being recognized soon with a Hammer Award from the National Partnership for Reinventing Government.

STIP Update

Walt Warnick noted his appreciation of the good attendance by the STIP community (see attendee list) and high level of interest and participation among the STIP members and encouraged the group to continue the good work. [Note: His overview of STIP accomplishments and challenges was included as a plenary presentation at InForum the following day (included in the InForum proceedings).]

E-Journal Project Update

R.L. Scott, current chair of the STIP Goal 2 Group, provided an overview of the DOE electronic journal initiative. STIP Goal 2 Group, one of the four STIP groups formed during the summer of 1997, is working to establish collaborative relationships to support STIP, and the initial focus has been on electronic journals. Specifically, this Group is pursuing using the collective purchasing power of the DOE community to help offset journal costs where possible and offer DOE sites the opportunity to join in these pricing arrangements. RL reviewed the survey issued in 1998 to collect demographic information and highlighted the points of contact for the twenty-one sites which have responded to-date. Several accomplishments were reviewed, including the consortium purchase arrangement for Science Online and the current trial underway of the Elsevier/LANL test system which leverages LANL expertise with one of the major publishers of scientific and technical journals. After two weeks into the Elsevier/LANL trial, there were over 10,000 PDF articles downloaded, which is a clear indication of the potential use of this system. Feedback of various users was shared with the group. Some of the issues impacting Departmental consortium arrangements were also discussed, and the STIP participants were encouraged to attend the presentation at InForum regarding electronic journals and the work of the STIP Goal 2 Group.

Work Authorization System Order Update

Susan Tackett presented an overview of DOE's Work Authorization System Order that was recently revised and issued by the Office of Field Management as DOE O 412.1 on 4/20/99. The Order establishes a work authorization and control process for work performed by M&O, M&I and ERMC contracts. The Order overview primarily highlighted new or revised STIP points of interest and updated STI references. The Order is to be effective 10/1/99; however, the effective date is not indicated on the formal directive. A DOE announcement will be subsequently disseminated to confirm the effective date. The Order is electronically available at: http://www.explorer.doe.gov:1776/cgi-bin/w3vdkhgw?qryLGC0NsBIk;doe-1097.

It was noted that Attachment 1, Contractor Requirements Document, Item 4, includes a new requirement as follows: "Make technical information available to the Director of Scientific and Technical Information (SC-33) in accordance with the requirements of DOE O 241.1, SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT. The unique work authorization and work proposal numbers should be included as a reference on the technical information accompanying announcement record (DOE F 241.1)." The inclusion of these numbers is anticipated to impact procedures for submitting sites and at OSTI and will necessitate a change to the form.

E-Link Update

Rita Hohenbrink provided an overview of the scientific and technical information (STI) processing system, DOE Energy Link (or E-Link), which has been at some level of operation since October 1998. Currently, the labs, operations offices, and headquarters can input their metadata and full text through this system. Once processed through this system, the metadata and electronic full text (unless only URLs are provided for the full text) reside on an Oracle repository database (see chart 1). At this time, other input and all output go through OSTI's old processing systems, including the old Energy Science and Technology database (EDB), to the Information Bridge (see chart 2). Plans are to transition all input streams through E-Link and generate all the output products from the Oracle repository database. This will not be complete until FY 2000 at the earliest.

Lynn Davis then provided information on E-Link usage, including: (1) statistics on receipts of 241.1 Web forms and full text, indicating the completed number of records is growing; 241.1 forms are submitted largely via the Web; while electronic full-text receipts move through the system much faster, paper receipts still represent a large number of submissions overall; most electronic full-text is PDF Normal format, with a high use also of URL's; current preferences by site for the form and full-text formats are shown in Table 1; and the product type metrics now include a breakdown for journal articles and conferences; (2) careful review and spell-checking of data before site release is highly encouraged for metadata fields such as STI Product Title, Author(s), Report Number, and Contract Number(s), which are validated only for presence data and not corrected at OSTI; items that slow processing include full-text filenames on the 241.1 that do not match the full text file itself and no abstract provided; (3) positives include E-Link's quick start-up to operational functionality on October 1, 1998; many sites are using the 241.1 form for input; several sites are submitting or attempting to submit SGML batch files; (4) E-Link features still under development or revision include read-only privileges, maintaining the input order of fields such as keyword and authors, abstracts cannot be gisted for some files, record correction, and a 241.1 template; and (5) communication with users occurs via an E-Link email distribution, with a regular teleconference soon to be established. Users may contact the Product Manager, Lynn Davis, by email at 241user@adonis.osti.gov or phone 423-241-6435.

Goal Group Actions and Proposed New Approach

Kathy Waldrop presented a proposal for transitioning existing STIP Goal Work Groups to Special Interest Groups (SIGs). The objective of making the transition is to narrow the focus imposed by the current Goal Work Group structure for addressing STIP related activities. The STIP Meeting participants accepted the proposal. Groups will be established as tasks are identified and each group will focus on one task rather than multiple tasks. Each group will also be required to produce a designated deliverable within a targeted time frame. Transitioning to this structure is appealing to the majority because membership of each group will be comprised of individuals who have an interest in the outcome of the task and when the task has been completed the group will be dissolved. A follow-up comment from one of the STIP Meeting participants was to refer to the new work groups as task forces rather than SIGs, because a task force best describes the criteria set forth to meet the objective. Therefore, it was decided to adopt "Task Force" in lieu of SIG to describe each individual group. The transitioning of the Goal Work Groups will begin in the very near future. List serves for individual Goal Work Groups will be eliminated. The STIP list serve will remain the primary source for communicating Task Force activities.

Visibility Working Group Status Report

Dennis Hall opened the Visibility Working Group presentation, which included the following components: an historical stage/backgound, presented by Pat Kreitz; market analysis with product and customer matrix, Kathy Macal; current information resources, Beth Perry; and vision for the organization of a DOE Distributed Information Resource, Dennis Hall. STIP agreed that the consortium concept, with clarifications of roles as discussed, could foster the formation of a stronger STIP partnership. It was agreed that the Visibility Working Group would proceed. The next step is for the Group to prepare a "white paper" proposing a consortium concept in a request for comment, for wide review within the STIP community. The desired outcome is to obtain STIP endorsement of a draft proposal by the November STIP meeting.

Order/Guide Issues

Sharon Jordan reviewed topics related to the Order and Guide (see attachment). The discussion included the status of the revision to Part III of the Guide being worked on by a subteam led by Cindy Crego, Fermilab. The revision will incorporate the concept of decentralized STI management and update other procedures and information. Comments on the informal draft are due to Cindy by 5/18. The revision of Part III is tentatively planned to be completed by fall, for implementation in January 2000. Other suggested corrections or changes to the Guide brought to OSTI's attention will be prepared for STIP concurrence and then incorporated during that same time frame during the formal directives revision process. Another topic was status of the Departmental transition to electronic formats. The E-Link statistics presented by Lynn Davis are one indicator, as well as the updated chart (see Table 1) showing that various organizations are using electronic methods for the DOE F 241.1 and full-text. It was agreed that it is still too early in the implementation and use of electronic STI to consider re-assessing goals for 2004, but the opportunity to review them will arise during the next directives sunset review. Additional discussion topics dealt with clarifying guidance on such items as useful STI, copyrighted materials, preprints, access limitations, author e-mail notification, and other topics which are impacting E-Link record submission/processing and announcement on the DOE Information Bridge. In future, those topics will be discussed in more detail with the E-Link submitters. This is consistent with a suggestion to restructure the monthly STI meet-me calls to focus more on STI management issues. E-Link and other procedural topics will be covered in a separate forum to be established in the near future.

Meeting Summary and Adjournment

Karen Spence summarized actions from the meeting as relating to the WAS order, E-Link product activities, restructuring of Goal Groups into Task Forces, Visibility Working Group proposal, and upcoming Guide revisions. She also explained that the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) had selected the collective effort of a 96-member Department-wide "STIP Electronic Transition Team," for the transition of the scientific and technical information program from a paper-based operation to an electronic one, as reflected in revised and streamlined Department of Energy (DOE) policy Order and non-mandatory Guide, to receive a Hammer Award. However, the NPR process for each Hammer recipient requires verification of each named individual, thus it was agreed that the STIP group would be represented by the goal team leaders, one laboratory STI manager representative, and one Ops Office TIO representative, along with the OSTI STIP staff. That procedure has not been completed yet by NPR. Karen then announced the preliminary plans for the next STIP meeting, to be held in Las Vegas, November 3-4, 1999, and adjourned the meeting.