Current Research Information System Research Articles

An ORCID based synchronization framework for a national CRIS ecosystem.

PTCRIS (Portuguese Current Research Information System) is a program aiming at the creation and sustained development of a national integrated information ecosystem, to support research management according to the best international standards and practices. This paper reports on the experience of designing and prototyping a synchronization framework for PTCRIS based on ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID). This framework embraces the "input once, re-use often" principle, and will enable a substantial reduction of the research output management burden by allowing automatic information exchange between the various national systems. The design of the framework followed best practices in rigorous software engineering, namely well-established principles in the research field of consistency management, and relied on formal analysis techniques and tools for its validation and verification. The notion of consistency between the services was formally specified and discussed with the stakeholders before the technical aspects on how to preserve said consistency were explored. Formal specification languages and automated verification tools were used to analyze the specifications and generate usage scenarios, useful for validation with the stakeholder and essential to certificate compliant services.

Strategies towards Evaluation beyond Scientific Impact. Pathways not only for Agricultural Research

Various research fields, like organic agricultural research, are dedicated to solving real-world problems and contributing to sustainable development. Therefore, systems research and the application of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches are increasingly endorsed. However, research performance depends not only on self-conception, but also on framework conditions of the scientific system, which are not always of benefit to such research fields. Recently, science and its framework conditions have been under increasing scrutiny as regards their ability to serve societal benefit. This provides opportunities for (organic) agricultural research to engage in the development of a research system that will serve its needs. This article focuses on possible strategies for facilitating a balanced research evaluation that recognises scientific quality as well as societal relevance and applicability. These strategies are (a) to strengthen the general support for evaluation beyond scientific impact, and (b) to provide accessible data for such evaluations. Synergies of interest are found between open access movements and research communities focusing on global challenges and sustainability. As both are committed to increasing the societal benefit of science, they may support evaluation criteria such as knowledge production and dissemination tailored to societal needs, and the use of open access. Additional synergies exist between all those who scrutinise current research evaluation systems for their ability to serve scientific quality, which is also a precondition for societal benefit. Here, digital communication technologies provide opportunities to increase effectiveness, transparency, fairness and plurality in the dissemination of scientific results, quality assurance and reputation. Furthermore, funders may support transdisciplinary approaches and open access and improve data availability for evaluation beyond scientific impact. If they begin to use current research information systems that include societal impact

Criteria for Assessment of Current Condition and Development of Research Studies Based on Scientometric Data Analysis (Comment by P. Arefiev)

The article reviews criteria for scientific research performance assessment. It analyzes feasibility of the task to develop scientifically based methods that would allow assessment of activities performed by individual research departments and teams. The authors believe that a full-scale study of the dynamics of scientific departments and teams development should be based on the Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) within companies integrated into the national CRIS. The authors suggest a method to assess performance of the ongoing research studies based on the review of ratings of journals on which a research team’s studies are published.

Classifying scientific disciplines in Slovenia: A study of the evolution of collaboration structures

We explore classifying scientific disciplines including their temporal features by focusing on their collaboration structures over time. Bibliometric data for Slovenian researchers registered at the Slovenian Research Agency were used. These data were obtained from the Slovenian National Current Research Information System. We applied a recently developed hierarchical clustering procedure for symbolic data to the coauthorship structure of scientific disciplines. To track temporal changes, we divided data for the period 1986–2010 into five 5‐year time periods. The clusters of disciplines for the Slovene science system revealed 5 clusters of scientific disciplines that, in large measure, correspond with the official national classification of sciences. However, there were also some significant differences pointing to the need for a dynamic classification system of sciences to better characterize them. Implications stemming from these results, especially with regard to classifying scientific disciplines, understanding the collaborative structure of science, and research and development policies, are discussed.

La publicación de artículos en las áreas de ciencias sociales y humanidades analizada a partir de los sistemas de información sobre investigación: el caso de las Universidades de Barcelona y Girona

Current Research Information Systems from universities can supplement the data offered by international multidisciplinary databases such as WoS or Scopus, especially in disciplines where coverage in these is not sufficiently comprehensive. This study examines characteristics of journal articles in the fields of social sciences and humanities that were published by professors and researchers from two Catalan universities. Data were extracted from databases providing free access to the records of both academic institutions’ scholarly production. The results obtained reveal the importance of open access to these kinds of records, as well as the existence of differences among areas of knowledge in quality, level of collaboration, percentage of disclosure, and language of publication, although there is a general trend towards a greater relative use of the English language.

The Gradual Merging of Repository and CRIS Solutions to Meet Institutional Research Information Management Requirements

Much has been said in recent times about the alleged dichotomy between Institutional Repositories (IRs) and Current Research Information Systems (CRISs). According to this highly ideological argument, IRs would be the platforms to support the non- commercial initiative jointly carried out by HEIs – and specifically their Libraries – in order to freely disseminate their research outputs, whereas CRISs would support the whole institutional research information management (RIM) with special emphasis on projects and funding. RIM being an activity oriented towards reporting for research assessment exercises and thus tightly connected to the institutional funding, the support from the Management at HEIs for CRIS implementation and operation and for the Research Office traditionally in charge of such tasks would be much higher than for the much less relevant IR. Moreover, the awareness of researchers and scholars towards such platforms will usually be much higher for the CRIS – from whose accurate and complete depiction of their research activity their salaries will ultimately depend – and it won’t be unusual to collect complaints on the need to ensure that both systems are simultaneously fed with the appropriate, often duplicated information. According to this conception, it is often hard to get the institutional Research Office and Library to work together for improving the end-user experience by enhancing their system interoperability.While much of this may still be happening at a number of HEIs, the general landscape is swiftly evolving and it's not that accurate anymore to describe the RIM system configuration at institutions in such oversimplified terms. CRIS/IR interoperability is now a fairly widespread feature that will allow both platforms to efficiently exchange information and reinforce each other's features, and especially the borders between what each of these platforms is and does are becoming increasingly blurred. Commercial CRISs are gradually becoming compliant with the OAI-PMH protocol and thus becoming able to offer institutions an integrated repository functionality, while the main open source IR platforms have now developed extended data models that will allow them to deliver features traditionally associated to CRISs such as project and funding management, hence becoming suitable solutions for research institutions where purchasing or developing a highly-sophisticated CRIS is not a top priority.This paper aims to describe the areas where CRIS/IR interoperability is taking place, and will provide a set of use cases for institutional research information system configuration involving IRs, CRISs and a combination of both. These will show how both systems are now increasingly merging for best serving institutions and their researchers.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations in CRIS

Electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) represent a significant part of academic publications. They contain valuable information about academic research, in particular on research projects, institutions and experts. This information can be useful for the management of expertise and skills of persons and organisations in the current research information systems (CRIS). The paper provides an overview on projects and initiatives linking ETD and CRIS infrastructures, with empirical insight from existing systems in Slovakia, Iran and France. The paper reviews also the way the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) integrates the specific information related to ETD (results, links, second level elements, semantics…). The discussion puts the focus on metadata, interoperability and complementary material (data). The findings allow for the framing of some recommendations on the integration of ETD in CRIS.

Particular Experience in Design and Implementation of a Current Research Information System in Russia: National Specificity

We present our experience to implement a Current Research Information System in the Astrakhan State University, Russia. The CRIS covers research information such as publications, funding, projects, and patents. Education, training, professional activity, and expertise are also within the scope of the CRIS. The metadata of research output are stored as a single record, regardless of the number of contributors and their belonging to different divisions. Data linkage associates a research output with contributors and their departments. A faculty fills own profile and links the metadata with co-authors. The more active and responsible users employ the CRIS, the more complete and reliable is information. Some metadata are imported from external data sources, in particular from Russian Science Citation Index. CRIS can generate Statistical Reports, CV's, Publication Lists, ratings, etc. When implementing the system the main problems are not technical but organizational. The bureaucratic obstacles hinder the exchange of information between different sources. The managerial staff does not demonstrate the real interest in getting actual, complete and accurate information about the research outputs. Some of the faculty has rather little computer skills and low interest in filling the database.

Showing it all – A New Interface for Finding all Norwegian Research Output

CRIStin (Current Research Information System in Norway) is on the verge of implementing a SOLR based search engine, capable of indexing the entire national CRIS database as well as all the full text entries in NORA (Norwegian Open Research Archive). Perhaps the most useful feature of the search index, from a CRIS point of view, is as a tool for validating and improving data integrity. But in addition to this and the vastly increased speed, it will also provide the basis for a host of novel and exciting services like geographical mapping, timelines, RSS feeds and an externally available API.

Publication Metadata in CERIF: Inspiration by FRBR

The Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and its Scholarly Works Application Profile (SWAP) are used to inspire the representation of complex real world situations in the publication part of the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF), the model for Current Research Information Systems (CRIS). CERIF is found to have room for different approaches to representing metadata of scholarly publications, which could hamper the interoperability of CRIS. To lessen that risk, we propose guidelines for representing scholarly publication metadata in CERIF; our design goal is to enhance the utility of CRIS in supporting the functions of scientific communication. The guidelines are formulated using the notions of Scholarly Work, Expression and Manifestation from FRBR/SWAP.

CERIF – Is the Standard Helping to Improve CRIS?

Governments and organizations are creating Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) to follow the growth of the amount of research data, providing tools to collect, preserve and disseminate that data. At the same time, we are facing the appearance of standards designed to regulate CRIS development. Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) is a standard for managing and exchanging research data. There are several types of CRIS – institutional, regional, national and international. In this work we have just considered the national and international types of CRIS worldwide. Only seven of them were CERIF-compliant. The aim of this study is to conclude if the use of CERIF is increasing the number of features in CRIS and how deep CERIF-compliant CRIS are adopting CERIF. Applying all the criteria considered in our methodology, only ten CRIS were analyzed, four of which are CERIF-compliant. CERIF tends to increase similarities between CRIS, in terms of its features and its data models. However, the need for customization of such systems leads to various implementations of the standard, creating an opposite effect of the one referred before. CRIS non CERIF-compliant have as central focus the researchers. The CERIF takes CRIS to focus also on projects and institutions of the research domain. With this exception, the CERIF doesn’t show an increase of the number of features. We also consider the use of Dublin Core to increase interoperability between CRIS.

National Open Access Scientific Articles Registration System (NOSARS)

Research information is becoming increasingly important in the knowledge societies. In Islamic Republic of Iran, a national current research information system has been established to manage all research information. Scientific journal articles, as the outputs of the research, are one of the main entities in CRISes.In this paper, we show the process of the establishment of our National Open-access Scientific Articles Registration System. We have proposed to employ registration process for collecting all related articles. Our experience shows that this method has achieved a great success in establishment of a complete, current and valid NOSARS.

BoRIS and BIA: CRIS and Institutional Repository Integration at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

This paper describes the implementation at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (FUB) of a Current Research Information System named BoRIS (Bozen-Bolzano Research Information System, an implementation of Avedas Converis 5 software) integrated not only with locally developed Human Resource Information (HRIS) and Financial systems (PIS) but also with an Institutional Repository BIA (Bozen-Bolzano Institutional Archive, an hosted instance of open source software DSpace 3.2) and the publication database of the Italian Ministry for Education, Universities and Research “Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca, MIUR”.

Recent Work by the euroCRIS Best Practice/DRIS Task Group: A Way Forward for Engaging with the CRIS Community

Providing specific outputs for the CRIS community from the euroCRIS Best Practice/DRIS Task Group has remained a pending task for quite a long time. This is a description of the strategy laid out by the new Best Practice/DRIS Task Group management for re-launching TG activity within the wider framework of a euroCRIS service catalogue. A deeper engagement with the CRIS community is presented as one of the main challenges to achieve in forthcoming months in order for this strategy to deliver.Following the recent change in the TG management, the first guidelines have now been put together for achieving a gradual increase in the coverage of the Directory of Research Information Systems (DRIS) and the production of Best Practice dissemination materials related to CRIS implementation and operation in different areas. The DRIS and Best Practice sub-strands are perceived as mutually reinforcing, as well as tightly linked to other euroCRIS TGs such as CRIS/IR interoperability. Progress in all of these will require a deeper level of stakeholder engagement activity than the one carried out so far. A successful TG activity will thus strongly rely on the ability to promote participation in and feedback to the Group discussions. We expect the dissemination of useful Best Practice information on Current Research Information System implementation and operation to underline the gradual emergence of a professional CRIS community working together for mutual support and reinforcement. This will eventually attract new institutions to become part of such community both as users and as suppliers of valuable information, in the end leading to a higher degree of harmonisation and optimal performance at HEIs.

Transparency of research policy and the role of librarians

The current study examines the impact of a research agency on researchers’ behaviour in the context of science policy and the decision to use an existing Library Union catalogue system – Co-operative Online Bibliographic System and Services – as the basis for a research data evaluation. Central and Eastern Europe countries, new European Union member states, represent an ideal laboratory to study the evolution of research organisation since changes are more rapid and profound than in Western European countries. That is why the effects of implementing the transparency of research results on a national level, in Slovenia, are presented through a case study of the Slovenian Research Agency. Thomson Scientific Web of Science citation databases have been used as a starting point for conducting publication analyses after the introduction of new Slovenian Current Research Information System. The findings suggest that transparency, if required by the research funding organisation per se, offers a change and can steer the growth of publications containing research results, as researchers generally see transparency as a positive element which promotes their work. It is also an important promotion of the work done by librarians in research and academic libraries, as they are responsible for the data. This is in line with the suggestion that library and information professionals should seize the opportunity to have an influence on government policy making in providing bibliometric expertise regarding research evaluation (Oppenheim, 2008).

Innovative OpenSource Technologies for a CRIS: SURplus, a CINECA’s solution

SURplus is the CINECA’s best-of-breed solution for a CRIS, Current Research Information System. It is an IT platform that makes it easy to collect and manage data on research activities and outputs within an organization. Researchers, administrators and evaluators are given all the tools needed to monitor research results, enhance visibility and efficiently allocate available resources One of the strengths of SURplus is that it sets new trends for IT support to CRIS, proposing and adopting innovative solutions to meet research need for governance. The decision to develop the solution on several open-source standards confirms this attitude. This paper describes the use of three solutions applied to different modules of SURplus CRIS platform.

Promoting International Interoperability of Research Information Systems: VIVO and CERIF

Institutional repositories (IR) and Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) store and manage information on the context in which research activity takes place. Several models, standards and ontologies have been proposed to date as solutions to provide coherent semantic descriptions of research information. These present a large degree of overlap but also present very different approaches to modelling. This paper introduces a contrast of two of the more widespread models, the VIVO ontology and the CERIF standards, and provides guidance for mapping them in a way that enables clients to integrate data coming from heterogeneous sources. The majority of mapping challenges have risen from the representation of VIVO sub- hierarchies in CERIF as well as from the representation of CERIF attributes in VIVO. In addition, the paper illustrates features for linking data across the Web, for querying of geographically distributed data stores and for aggregating data described using different data models in a common store. These features are supported by semantic web technologies including RDF, OWL and SWRL.

Notes on Operations

This paper discusses the extension of the Current Research Information System (CRIS) at the University of Novi Sad, Republic of Serbia, to incorporate electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). Data describing ETDs is entered using a web application that enables researchers to input their own data through a webpage without knowing the standards on which the system is based. The ETDs repository can exchange data with CRIS institutional repositories and Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations members. In this way, the international visibility of theses and dissertations created at the University of Novi Sad is enhanced without duplicating data entry in various systems. This approach has been verified and tested on a dataset of theses and dissertations at the University of Novi Sad.

Establishing a Research Information System as Part of an Integrated Approach to Information Management: Best Practice at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is one of the largest research and higher education organisations in the world focusing on engineering and natural sciences. At present KIT, under the chairmanship of its executive board, is installing an extensive current research information system (CRIS) covering all institutes and facilities of the organisation. The assumption underlying the project is that a consistent overview of research performance has become fundamental for the international competitiveness of research institutions and is increasingly important for strategic decisions at the executive level. Ultimately, it also leads to better data and control in rankings at higher education assessments. The new research information system systematically maps all of KIT’s processes and instruments to obtain, connect, present and utilise the research metadata of active researchers. This reduces the documentation workload for researchers, for the executive level and central units such as the library, and at the same time allows for and facilitates an overall view and the aggregation and visualisation of research metadata. Our vision is to build a federally structured network of systems that gathers information on KIT’s publications, research competence, research projects, patents and technological offers by retrieving data from external and internal sources as well as directly from the researchers. The network facilitates linking and aggregating of data and provides unique identifiers for individual researchers and organizational units. With its consistent data model the research information system also fosters the organisational development of KIT, which was formed in 2009 by the merger of a university and a national research centre. The researchers and their activities are at the core of the research information system. The system substantially reduces their administrative burden in documenting project information and publications. Automatic data import from external online sources and repositories has the big advantage that publication data are acquired and validated only once and can be used subsequently for manifold purposes such as websites, CVs, publication lists and reference management software. Due to the complexity of workflows, internal and external sources and the organisational infrastructure that is required for such an implementation, KIT has chosen a commercial software solution (by AVEDAS AG) as the basic installation, and in cooperation with AVEDAS will expand it and adjust it to a tailor-made system that covers the entire KIT publication and research life cycle. The CRIS at KIT is part of a larger integrated and service-oriented approach to information management (Karlsruhe Integrated Information Management — KIM).

Modeling the Semantics of Contextual and Content-specific Research Metadata using Ontology Languages: issues on combining CERIF and OWL

Current Research Information Systems (CRISs) enable the maintenance of information related to research activities of organizations and their members, including outputs or products from these activities. Such contextual information is of uttermost importance for the processing of datasets and with the retrieval of scientific documents, providing e.g. the key information on provenance and characteristics of research activities that are needed when searching for data or scholarly content. In the context of the expanding initiative of the Web of Linked Data, translating that information into semantic languages enables new ways of querying benefitting from the reuse of domain ontologies. In that direction, this paper reports on the engineering of an ontology based version of the CERIF standard for CRISs using the OWL language and a proposed mapping to research datasets.