The “euroCRIS Strategic Membership Meeting”, the annual meeting of the partners and community of euroCRIS, the international organization dealing with Current Research Information Systems (CRIS), will be held in Athens this year. The event is organized by euroCRIS in collaboration with the National Documentation Center (EKT) on 8-10 November at the National Research Foundation (“L. Zervas” Amphitheatre, Vas. Konstantinou 48, Athens).
The “euroCRIS Athens Strategic Membership Meeting” event is addressed to researchers, as well as to those interested in research infrastructures based on Information and Communication Technologies (CRIS, digital repositories and journals) or involved in issues of management and dissemination of research and innovation (funding programs, exploitation of research results, strengthening business competitiveness).
At this year's meeting, entitled "Towards optimal Research information Infrastructures on a national and international level", particular emphasis will be placed on the path towards a European research information infrastructure and the conclusions from current initiatives and collaborations taking place in Europe, as well as at a global level, will be presented.
To attend the Meeting, registration is required on the website www.eurocris.org, where the event program is also available. For those who are members of the euroCRIS organization, as well as for Greek participants (researchers, representatives of organizations, etc.) (option: local representatives), registration is free. The deadline for registration is November 1, 2016.
As part of the meeting, two special national sessions are also being held, with Greek speakers from research centers and universities, which concern the creation of optimal information infrastructures at the local, national and international levels.
It is noted that Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) have been widely deployed in recent years in academic/research institutions, mainly in the European Union. CRIS systems are proposed by the European Parliament as the systems on which the large pan-European infrastructure for measuring European research can be built.
As the organizers point out, the theme of the Meeting is essential and timely for a number of reasons. Research information infrastructures are becoming increasingly important for those who produce and use research data and information, whether it is researchers themselves (for maximum exposure and discovery of their research and data), or directors of research institutions (for better direction, monitoring and comparison of research), or funders (for better evaluation of their investments), or policymakers (as a basis for documentation regarding the development of strategy and vision). All of the above stakeholders benefit substantially from optimal, standardized research information infrastructures.
At the international level, a typical example is the Open Science initiative “European Open Science Cloud Initiative”, which was recently launched by the European Union with the aim of creating optimal scientific research and data infrastructures at the European level.
Detailed information about the Meeting, the program and the registration form are available on the websites of euroCRIS (www.eurocris.org) and the National Documentation Center (www.ekt.gr).
The importance of CRIS systems and the role of the ESF at national level
The systematic and standardized recording of research activity in research organizations constitutes the core of CRIS systems that record research activity through the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) data standard, a powerful international standard that enables the semantic and chronological interconnection of a very large number of research data. The CERIF standard has been developed by the euroCRIS organization, with the active contribution of the EKT, which has been a member since 1997, while it has been a member of its Board of Directors since 2009.
Based on the CERIF standard, a large amount of data is semantically and chronologically interconnected, presenting the overall picture of the research activity of institutions and countries, and emphasizing the recording of the results of research activity (publications, patents, research data) and their connection with the environment in which they are created (researchers, organizations, funded programs and projects, research infrastructures, services).
EKT has developed the Greek CRIS software platform that will form the backbone of a national CRIS infrastructure. The national CRIS infrastructure will include the individual systems that will operate in academic and research institutions and the central accumulator that will operate in EKT, which will be fed with information from the individual systems of the institutions. In the context of the development of the platform, two pilot applications were implemented, at the University of Patras in collaboration with the University Library and Information Center, and at the National Research Foundation.
The CRIS software platform is available, through the collaboration of EKT and the Association of Hellenic Academic Libraries (SEAB), to academic institutions – members of SEAB for the development of institutional CRIS systems. Experts from SEAB participated, at the invitation of EKT, in defining the development requirements of the platform.
The CRIS platform has already been made available to 16 Universities and Technical and Educational Institutions, while in the future it can be used by a wider range of interested bodies with research activity, such as research centers, public and private health institutions.
The development of the CRIS software platform and the national CRIS aggregator for Greek academic and research institutions was carried out within the framework of the project “National Research and Technology Information System/Social Networks – User-Generated Content” (www.epset.gr), which was implemented by the European Fund for Economic and Social Research within the framework of the Operational Programme “Digital Convergence” (ESRF), with co-financing from Greece and the European Union – European Regional Development Fund.
Internet addresses
Athens euroCRIS Strategic Membership Meeting (8-10 November 2016)
euroCRIS
CRIS systems from the ESF
