Prozessdaten zur Forschung – die Standardisierung von Forschungsinformationen (Research Information Standardisation)

Die vom Wissenschaftsrat im Januar 2016 verabschiedete Empfehlung zur Spezifikation des Kerndatensatz Forschung befindet sich derzeit in der Implementierungsphase.
Der Vortrag wird sich dem Prozess der Spezifikation des Kerndatensatz Forschung als auch seinen potenziellen Anwendungsmöglichkeiten widmen und einen Überblick über die geplante Einführung und Nutzbarkeit geben. Des Weiteren soll eine Einordnung des Kerndatensatz Forschung in den internationalen Kontext von Forschungsinformationssystemen erfolgen.

(The recommendations on the specifications of the Core Data Set on Research Activities, issued by the German Council of Science and Humanities in January 2016, are currently in the implementation phase. This presentation will deal with the process leading to the specifications of the Core Data Set on Research Activities as well its potential application and give an overview of the launch phase and future usage examples. Moreover, the presentation aims at locating the core data set in the international context of research information systems.)

In our era of growing international cooperation, researcher mobility and online communication, interoperability of research information becomes a crucial aspect as this information is more and more distributed over various, and often internationally dispersed, resources. The consequence of this is that, in order to get "the full picture" of a research project, for example, the performance or CV of a researcher or the information needed for evaluation and benchmarking of research, it is necessary to combine a multitude of information sources. This aspect, however, requires that the pieces of information are understood in the same way by the various systems and users involved, are uniquely identified no matter in which system they reside, and are easily and transparently exchanged between the various systems in the information network. In short, interoperability of research information requires the three pillars of standardisation to be in place: standard definitions and vocabularies (of objects and entities), unique and persistent identifiers, and a standard exchange format. Today, solutions are available for all three pillars, worked out by various organisations in the research information community, e.g. CASRAI (for the definitions), ORCiD and ISNI (for the identifiers) and euroCRIS (for the exchange format - CERIF). The challenge before us is to formulate an integrated vision, including the three pillars, and - next - to concretely and optimally implement them in our research information practices and infrastructures.

The Current Research Information System in Norway (CRIStin) has since 2010 served more than 160 research organizations (universities, university colleges, hospitals and independent research institutes) as a nationally integrated system for recording and presenting resources and outputs in research. Denmark and Finland have established similar systems by integrating data from local information systems at the universities. Iceland and Sweden recently provided funding for developing a system with the same purpose. NordForsk, the organisation that facilitates and provides funding for Nordic research cooperation and research infrastructure, is presently funding an initiative to make the data comparable across all five countries.
In my presentation, I will first give an overview of the current solutions to research information standardization in the Scandinavia. I will then give examples of how data from the Norwegian system have been used for four different purposes: monitoring, evaluation, funding, and studies of research. I will end by discussing what I see as the main advantages and limitations with using CRIS data for those four purposes.