0.14 The evia project: many challenges, some solutions  (Page 9/9)

Personal annotations are fashioned, at a low level, upon the model developed for the OCVE pilot study. Registration is required in order for end users to be able to create annotations, which can either be publicly visible (i.e., available to any user of the web resource, whether registered or not) or private (i.e., visible only to the user-creator). The annotations themselves make use of a standard client-side, rich-text editor which allows the user to express basic formatting and structure in their annotation (including the creation of links), which is then stored as XHTML in the OCVE database. Each annotation can additionally be given a title, and each user’s “My OCVE” page offers a quick overview of the annotations created within the system.

One of our key aims in developing the web-based annotation mechanism in Phase 1 was to ensure that the process of creating annotations was as cognitively undemanding as possible, See John Bradley and Paul Vetch, “Supporting Annotation as a Scholarly Tool—Experiences From the Online Chopin Variorum Edition,” Literary and Linguistic Computing, 22 (2007): 225–41. and primarily for this reason we decided to make annotations attachable at the level of the bar only (rather than to specific coordinates). This allowed us to solve a further problem: the development of an interaction model sufficiently expressive to allow users easily to select multiple sources to which they want to apply an annotation. Users simply click the bar images of the sources to select those to which they wish their annotations to be relevant (or click a second time to unselect).

A tension between accessibility and authority is evident in respect to these meta-annotations. If a free, online resource enables users to “create their own editions” and integrate their own comments in a dynamic edition environment, it also requires an effective system for dealing with comments, changes and annotations. Self-policing works most effectively in popular, large-scale fora: given that only a relatively small group of scholars and music professionals might take part in a music-editing forum, the monitoring of comments along the lines of Wikipedia might prove difficult and, ultimately, unsustainable. But if such comments are clearly identified as separate from the core scholarly resource, a lack of monitoring/moderation is not necessarily problematic.

Annex 3: practice-led research and the arts and humanities research council

The following text has been adapted from the AHRC’s Research Funding Guide ( www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Documents/Research%20Funding%20Guide.pdf ).

The AHRC provides funding for research:

• where practice is an integral component;
• where it is specifically undertaken with a view to generating outputs and outcomes with a defined application beyond the education sector; and/or
• where it theorizes contemporary practice in order to inform the Principal Investigator’s own individual practice. [p. 11]

Research of this kind should:

• examine specific research problems, issues or questions in a structured way;
• be informed by the intellectual infrastructure of established research methods or approaches in the field;
• be able to define new research processes, or alternatively, apply existing knowledge, methods, approaches, tools or resources in new contexts in order to solve a problem;
• break new ground (e.g., by bringing about enhancements in knowledge and understanding in the discipline, or in related disciplinary areas);
• be able to be replicated or elaborated, and where appropriate to be transferable beyond its immediate local application;
• have significance or impact and contribute to research in the field through dissemination of the results;
• specifically be undertaken with a view to generating outputs and outcomes with a defined application beyond the education sector. [pp. 17, 64]

Work that results purely from the creative or professional development of an artist, however distinguished, is unlikely to fulfill the requirements of research. [p. 64]

For practice-led projects, whilst creative output may be produced and practice undertaken as an integral part of the research process, the Council would expect this practice to be accompanied by some form of documentation of the research process, as well as some form of textual analysis or explanation to support its position and to demonstrate critical reflection. This documentation, analysis, and reflection must be an integral part of the project and must be carried out during the award period. These outputs can go beyond more traditional academic papers and can include such forms as journals or diaries, documentation on a website, CDs or DVDs, etc. A clear rationale for the appropriateness of the form of the Principal Investigator’s critical reflection should be provided. [p. 19]

Annex 4:primo (practice as research in music online)

This text comes from the website of PRIMO at http://primo.sas.ac.uk.

PRIMO describes itself as “a new platform for musical research in sound and vision” and as “a cumulative research archive.” Designed for research, study, and teaching, it presents full-length and excerpted rehearsals, workshops, performances, and demonstrations of various kinds. Some files are as short as five minutes; others last over an hour (these are segmented for ease of use). All are self-sufficient pieces of research, even when they represent a phase of a longer- term project. Some files will contain explanatory texts, but the point of the repository is to capture sonic events. Each item is accompanied by a description and abstract giving a summary of the item's content and an insight into its contribution to current research. PRIMO is subscription-free, peer-reviewed, and managed on behalf of the community by the Institute of Musical Research.

PRIMO aims to provide:

• an open-access repository of practice-based music research in which the primary medium is not the written word but the sonic or multi-media event;
• a forum where the processes of practice-based research can be demonstrated and shared within the research community;
• a uniquely dynamic and flexible publication outlet which presents files in different media as a coherent group.

Users of PRIMO are likely to be those who have an interest in composition and performance as research processes; those who study the ergonomics, psychology, ritual play or ethnography of performance; and those interested in performance practice. PRIMO welcomes research involving disciplines other than music with the proviso that musical research questions must lie at the core of the submission. It equally welcomes single, self-standing items and series of items documenting research processes.