Scientific Outputs: Integration and Unification of Catalan CRIS Information Systems

Society increasingly demands quickly, easily and a homogeneous access to the information. Access to Internet, mobile devices, social networks as Facebook or ResearchGate, which create links between people to share data reaching anywhere in the world within seconds or the increase commitment for the cloud, where access from any device and place allowing the access to the own documents, videos, photos, music, etc. keeping the own customized environment or applications to share documents as Google Drive or Dropbox, which allows to agile data access are examples of agility in the flow of information and is something that nowadays is needed and is no longer questioned. This paradigm transferred in the scope of research, knowing that universities, their affiliated research centers and researchers have the aim on spending time doing research, getting funds for their research or teaching and the moment to feel the need to transfer or enter the results into an information system that do not report short-term progress or improvement in their day to day of research never arrives. Faced with this situation takes more relevance offer systems that provide the flexibility and immediacy of access to scientific publications generated. In this regard already exists commercial databases as Web Of Science, PubMed, Dialnet, Scopus, Google Scholar, etc. that provides it. On the other hand, SIGMA Gestión Universitaria, which is a not-for-profit consortium established in 1996 by a group of 8 top level Spanish Public Universities to provide technological solutions to their needs for managing academic, learning, research and organization processes aligning its ARGOS Research Project Solution with the ERA requirements. SIGMA and their universities have made great efforts to promote competitiveness, mobility, create synergies and improve the research quality in-house, regionally, nationally and internationally. This has allowed great progress in all areas, researcher’s mobility, creating synergies with shared resource centers between different institutions and improving the research visibility generated. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +34-935-906-504; fax: +34-902-550-734. E-mail address: [email protected] 2 Núria Cuní / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2014) 000–000 But in an autonomic scenario there is still a long way to go in order to offer a homogeneous research information system to the world. In May 2012, the Catalan Government and public universities agreed establish the new University Services Consortium of Catalonia (CSUC). The objective of the CSUC is to share academic services, scientific and management of associated companies for strengthening synergies and economies of scale to improve its effectiveness and efficiency. Among its main objectives in research scope, there are:  Institutional Repository of Open Access Documents  Management research Systems  Storage of scientific data  Access to Digital Library of Catalonia called CERCA for research centers  Public Research Portal with all the scientific activities done on Catalan Public Universities In order to accomplish these objectives CSUC have to deal with the different CRIS systems among Catalan public universities, providing some mechanisms to integrate information from the different CRIS into a unique central database which facilitate the information flow, avoiding problems such as information duplication and providing services to the community. SIGMA which provides a CRIS solution for three Catalan public universities is working with CSUC on the interoperability of the research information. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Peer-review under responsibility of euroCRIS.