euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519 1 A
Brief History of CRISs Keith G Jeffery President, euroCRIS
[email protected] www.eurocris.org Slide 2 euroCRIS/Keith G
JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519 2 CRIS a Current Research
Information System, commonly known as "CRIS", is any information
tool dedicated to provide access to and disseminate research
information (www.eurocris.org)www.eurocris.org A CRIS consists of a
datamodel describing objects of interest to R&D a tool or set
of tools to manage the data Slide 3 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief
History of CRISs 20050519 3 Purpose CRIS To assist users in their
recording, reporting and decision-making concerning the research
process whether developing programmes, allocating funding,
assessing projects, executing projects, generating results,
assessing results or transferring technology Slide 4 euroCRIS/Keith
G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519 4 The Users Research and
Development Information For the political decision-makers For the
funding organisations For the entrepreneurs For the researchers For
the innovators For the media For the general public Slide 5
euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519 5 Early
CRIS pre-1985 Usually text only Described projects Usually an
ordered set of (repeatable) fields, often in punched card format
Some had [ ] format Usually monolingual Based on library catalogue
card idea (i.e.metadata) Slide 6 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief
History of CRISs 20050519 6 Exceptions 1980s BEST (UK) British
Expertise in Science and Technology Each record essentially the CV
of a person Semi-structured with structure Had institution and
projects as fields COS (USA) Community of Science Developed at John
Hopkins University, Baltimore Similar to BEST (and since took it
over) LABO (FR) CNRS Laboratories Database Each record concerned
the organisational unit Had as fields people and projects Slide 7
euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519 7 CRIS
Interoperation The Need In Europe recognised need for standard
format for interchange of R&D information Two reports
Conference of European Rectors Conferences Committee of Heads of
Research Funding Agencies One initiative (1984-1987) IDEAS Project
FR-IT-UK Demonstrated homogeneous query access to heterogeneous
CRISs from all 3 countries (character set, language, syntax,
semantics) Used the catalog technique and structured exchange data
schema Slide 8 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs
20050519 8 CRIS Interoperation The Need (Wider) European Commission
picked up the idea 1987-1990 Put together a group of experts
nominated by national governments Included two of the IDEAS project
architects Purpose to define a Common European Research Information
Format (CERIF) Slide 9 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of
CRISs 20050519 9 CERIF 1991 experience & problems Single-entry
focus Simple Record Format Project was an Entity with Persons,
Organisations and other infomation represented as attributes
Problems with repeating groups and relationships Research
Classification Scheme recommended 1991 not updated since 1988 Slide
10 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519 10
CRISs and CERIF91 in the 1990s CERIF91 needed updating to handle
problems from experience of use CRIS becoming more important
noticeable both in EC and national governments Also standard needed
for ERGO (European Research Gateways Online) pilot initiative A
single central catalog of research projects from national databases
launched 1999 > 20 countries submitted data, > 90,000 records
Based on IDEAS project Slide 11 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief
History of CRISs 20050519 11 CRIS Conference The first conference
on CRISs 1991 Bergen, Norway Organised by Jostein Helland Hauge
Invited national experts as speakers Subsequent conferences until
2000 organised with the EC Conferences 2002 onwards Organised by
euroCRIS Slide 12 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs
20050519 12 CRIS Requirements 1990s entities, not more attributes
cover projects, persons, organisations and results: products,
patents, publications and facilities, equipment, events, services
lengths & types & language, character set repeating groups
(logical) flexibility - relationships (conceptual) better data
quality consistent coding (semantic) record history (date/time)
Slide 13 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519
13 CERIF 2000 Working Group of national representative experts set
up 1997 and coordinated by DGXIII-D4, EC Included two of the IDEAS
project architects CERIF2000 Guidelines, Final Report of the CERIF
Revision Working Group, 1999 Common format for development of new
CRISs Common format for exchange of data from records in existing
and future multiple different CRISs implies the need for common
format for metadata describing records in existing and future
multiple different CRISs Slide 14 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief
History of CRISs 20050519 14 Three Data Models The key to the CERIF
datamodel is Structured (syntax) First order logic (semantics) This
allows not only construction of a new interoperation-ready CRIS but
also wrapper-interoperation by generating CERIF from a legacy CRIS
Slide 15 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519
15 Three Data Models Slide 16 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief
History of CRISs 20050519 16 PROJECTORGUNIT SkillsCV General
Facility Particular Equipment Contact Results Publication Results
Patent Results Product Service Funding Programme Event
Classification Prize/Award PERSON Slide 17 euroCRIS/Keith G
JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519 17 PROJECTORGUNITPERSON
Result_Publication RESULT_PUBLICATION Concepts: (1)
temporally-bound role linking relations (2) >1 linking relation
: Result_Publication and other entities (3) PERSON role may be
author, co-author, editor, reviewer. (4) ORGUNIT role may be
publisher, IPR or copyright owner.. (5) PROJECT role may be the
source of the idea Slide 18 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History
of CRISs 20050519 18 RESULT_PUBLICATION PROJECT ORGUNIT PERSON
Result_Publication Can Express: Person A (DT1 - DT2) (is author of)
Publication X Orgunit O (DT1 - DT2) (is owner of IPR in)
Publication X Person A (DT1 - DT2) (is employee of ) Orgunit O
Person A (DT1 - DT2) (is project leader of) Project P Person A
(DT1-DT2) (is member of) Orgunit M Person A (DT1-DT2) (is member
of) Orgunit N Orgunit M (DT1-DT2) (is part of) Orgunit O Orgunit N
(DT1-DT2) (is part of) Orgunit O Slide 19 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA
Brief History of CRISs 20050519 19 CERIF A Template CRIS can be
implemented using subset or superset of full CERIF model: for
projects for people for organisations for publications, patents,
products for services for facilities, particular equipment with
role-based, temporally-bound relationships Slide 20 euroCRIS/Keith
G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519 20 CERIF The Advantages
Neutral Architecture Data Model can be implemented: relational
object-oriented information retrieval (including WWW) Process model
can be implemented DBMS and query; centralised or distributed; html
web / harvesting / IR-query; advanced knowledge-based technology
But interoperation requires structured schema Slide 21
euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519 21 CERIF
The use today ICERIS (IS) Access to Information on Icelandic
Research Projects & R&D Results AURIS-MM (AT) Provides
access to Austrian University Research extended with multimedia
SICRIS (SL) Access to University Research in Slovenia HUNCRIS
Access to R&D in Hungary SRIS (UK) Scottish Research
Information Systems, public research in Scotland CRIS-MER (EC)
Research information on Migration and ethnic Relations (planned)
CCLRC (UK) Corporate Data Model METIS (NL) currently used by Dutch
Universities Fdok (NO) University of Bergen, results FRIDA (NO)
Joint university CRIS IWETO (BE) Slide 22 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA
Brief History of CRISs 20050519 22 Revisions to CERIF2000 standard
CERIF2002, CERIF2004 Issues Publications Classification Custodians
of the model Required some organisation EC handed responsibility to
euroCRIS euroCRIS set up CERIF Task Group CERIF Developed beyond
2000 Slide 23 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs
20050519 23 euroCRIS Seminars As well as Custodianship of CERIF
Best practice The CRIS conferences Community-building euroCRIS
founded formally in 2001 (informally since 1991) Decided also to
run strategic seminars 2003 onwards Slide 24 euroCRIS/Keith G
JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519 24 Meanwhile: Catalogue
CRISs Some CRISs cataloguing other CRISs grew up e.g. DRIS Use HTML
Web pages with URLs to link to other CRISs Slide 25 euroCRIS/Keith
G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519 25 Meanwhile: CRIS by
Harvesting With the advent of WWW in the 1990s many universities
and other organisations produced websites describing their
projects, people, publications etc It was suggested that harvesting
these websites could generate a CRIS No known examples One attempt
failed Google Scholar a CRIS? publication-based but requires
massive resources Slide 26 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History
of CRISs 20050519 26 Meanwhile: Funding Organisations Had CRISs
since 1970s Updated to relational technology in 1980s Used to
manage the application, awarding and monitoring of R&D grants:
Project and finance-based Realised the need to make some of the
information available widely; generated websites from the databases
in 1990s Some provided web-based update late 1990s Huge problem
with update once grant awarded Huge problem of synchronisation with
equivalent record(s) in university or research institute or
cooperating industry databases Slide 27 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA
Brief History of CRISs 20050519 27 Meanwhile Publishers The
commercial publishers databases could be regarded as CRISs They
hold data on persons in role author They hold data on institutions
as addresses They hold data on publications as metadata full
article references / citations Within the article there may (or may
not) be information on projects, facilities, equipment, services,
products, events But it is hard to extract The same is true of open
access repositories Slide 28 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief
History of CRISs 20050519 28 Where are we now? CRISs Standalone
CRISs Variety of kinds Structured relational system Semi-structured
/ IR system Html pages / WWW system Some based on or using CERIF
Interoperating CRISs Homogeneous (all using same schema) simple
technology e.g. METIS Heterogeneous (different schemas) Need data
access and exchange schema standard Only working examples to date
IDEAS and ERGO (CERIF) Slide 29 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief
History of CRISs 20050519 29 Where are we now? Commercial CRISs Two
commercial offerings emerged recently uniCRIS (uniCRIS AG, CH) PURE
(Atira, DK) Both offerings One commercial offering since late 1980s
COS (COS, USA) Based on person as entity Semistructured CV-style
data and IR system Are based on structured database with web user
interfaces appear to be significantly less expensive than
developing a stand- alone CRIS in-house uniCRIS offers CERIF
interoperation Slide 30 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of
CRISs 20050519 30 Where are we now? And Where Next? The need: The
EC has declared the ERA (European Research Area) The Lisbon Targets
The Opportunity CRISs to record IP of an organisation to encourage
innovation, wealth creation, improved quality of life
Interoperating CRISs to support the ERA and Lisbon targets
especially to encourage cross-Europe innovation Note projects
CISTRANA and IST-World Slide 31 euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief
History of CRISs 20050519 31 euroCRIS The Role It is the role of
euroCRIS to: Promote and improve communication and interaction
between global CRIS; Maintain and publish the CERIF (Common
European Research Information Format) recommendation and any
standards endorsed by euroCRIS; Organize and run the CRIS series of
conferences with associated workshops and other events; Slide 32
euroCRIS/Keith G JefferyA Brief History of CRISs 20050519 32
euroCRIS The Role Provide a source of expertise in CRIS to members
and to others under business arrangements made at the time; Develop
euroCRIS guidelines; Nurture the CRIS community by events, a
newsletter, an online discussion forum and other appropriate
mechanisms; Provide a forum for exploring and exploiting new and
emerging concepts and technologies (including data quality,
standards, etc.); Establish a one-stop portal / gateway to
international CRIS resources. (eurocris charter)
