Towards a Maturity Model for Research Portals

Research portals are websites that present information about certain research activities and their corresponding results in a structured manner. Institutions like universities, businesses, or governmental organizations use them as knowledge base to identify and communicate “who researches on what” or “where can the relevant information, people, or funds be found”. Furthermore, such portals are increasingly used as a marketing measure to manifest own research positions and compete against others for resources and reputation. However, research portals differ in their range of functionalities regarding their target audience and current development state. In this paper, we develop a maturity model for research portals according to a well-founded procedure model. We evaluate our maturity model on the sample of 287 real-life research portals and provide selected analyses as well as interpretations regarding the model’s feasibility. We conclude presenting promising directions of further model development and opportunities of transfer into practice.