Web-based reference databases and subject gateways to locate current research information in agricultural and food sciences : a Finnish perspective

Selostus: Maatalous- ja elintarviketieteiden www-pohjaiset viitetietokannat ja aihehakemistot - suomalaisen tiedonetsijän näkökulma

Let's do data research work: the creation of a portal with research information from Catalan Universities

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

OpenAIRE guidelines: supporting interoperability for Data Archives

OpenAIRE supports the European Commission Open Access policy by providing an infrastructure for researchers to comply with the European Union Open Access mandate. The current OpenAIRE infrastructure and services, resulting from OpenAIRE and OpenAIREplus FP7 projects, builds on Open Access research results from a wide range of repositories and other data sources: institutional or thematic publication repositories, Open Access journals, data repositories, Current Research Information Systems and aggregators. (...)

UCL Discovery: raising the Open Access profile at the institution

Presentation at the "Tutkimus vapaaksi verkkoon!" seminar in Helsinki, January 25, 2011

Bridge over troubled water - using the CRIS in building Open Access infrastructures

Presentation at the Nordic Perspectives on Open Access and Open Science seminar, Helsinki, October 15, 2013

Open repositories of past, present and future

Presentation at the Nordic Perspectives on Open Access and Open Science seminar, Helsinki, October 15, 2013

Integrating CRIS and repository – an overview of the situation in Finland and in three other Nordic countries

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Strategies towards evaluation beyond scientific impact

Various research fields, like organic agricultural research, are dedicated to solving real-world problems and contributing to sustainable development. Therefore, systems research and the application of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches are increasingly endorsed. However, research performance depends not only on self-conception, but also on framework conditions of the scientific system, which are not always of benefit to such research fields. Recently, science and its framework conditions have been under increasing scrutiny as regards their ability to serve societal benefit. This provides opportunities for (organic) agricultural research to engage in the development of a research system that will serve its needs. This article focuses on possible strategies for facilitating a balanced research evaluation that recognises scientific quality as well as societal relevance and applicability. These strategies are (a) to strengthen the general support for evaluation beyond scientific impact, and (b) to provide accessible data for such evaluations. Synergies of interest are found between open access movements and research communities focusing on global challenges and sustainability. As both are committed to increasing the societal benefit of science, they may support evaluation criteria such as knowledge production and dissemination tailored to societal needs, and the use of open access. Additional synergies exist between all those who scrutinise current research evaluation systems for their ability to serve scientific quality, which is also a precondition for societal benefit. Here, digital communication technologies provide opportunities to increase effectiveness, transparency, fairness and plurality in the dissemination of scientific results, quality assurance and reputation. Furthermore, funders may support transdisciplinary approaches and open access and improve data availability for evaluation beyond scientific impact. If they begin to use current research information systems that include societal impact data while reducing the requirements for narrative reports, documentation burdens on researchers may be relieved, with the funders themselves acting as data providers for researchers, institutions and tailored dissemination beyond academia.

Knowledge Exchange Institutional Repository Workshop

The workshop took place on 16-17 January in Utrecht, with Seventy experts from eight European countries in attendance. The workshop was structured in six sessions: usage statistics research paper metadata exchanging information author identification Open Archives Initiative eTheses Following the workshop, the discussion groups were asked to continue their collaboration and to produce a report for circulation to all participants. The results can be downloaded below. The recommendations contained in the reports above have been reviewed by the Knowledge Exchange partner organisations and formed the basis for new proposals and the next steps in Knowledge Exchange work with institutional repositories. Institutional Repository Workshop - Next steps During April and May 2007 Knowledge Exchange had expert reviewers from the partner organisations go though the workshop strand reports and make their recommendations about the best way to move forward, to set priorities, and find possibilities for furthering the institutional repository cause. The KE partner representatives reviewed the reviews and consulted with their partner organisation management to get an indication of support and funding for the latest ideas and proposals, as follows: Pragmatic interoperability During a review meeting at JISC offices in London on 31 May, the expert reviewers and the KE partner representatives agreed that ‘pragmatic interoperability' is the primary area of interest. It was also agreed that the most relevant and beneficial choice for a Knowledge Exchange approach would be to aim for CRIS-OAR interoperability as a step towards integrated services. Within this context, interlinked joint projects could be undertaken by the partner organisations regarding the areas that most interested them. Interlinked projects The proposed Knowledge Exchange activities involve interlinked joint projects on metadata, persistent author identifiers, and eTheses which are intended to connect to and build on projects such as ISPI, Jisc NAMES and the Digital Author Identifier (DAI) developed by SURF. It is important to stress that the projects are not intended to overlap, but rather to supplement the DRIVER 2 (EU project) approaches. Focus on CRIS and OAR It is believed that the focus on practical interoperability between Current Research Information Systems and Open Access Repository systems will be of genuine benefit to research scientists, research administrators and librarian communities in the Knowledge Exchange countries; accommodating the specific needs of each group. Timing June 2007: Write the draft proposal by KE Working Group members July 2007: Final proposal to be sent to partner organisations by KE Group August 2007: Decision by Knowledge Exchange partner organisations.

Research commentary: Information systems and conceptual modeling - A research agenda

Within the information systems field, the task of conceptual modeling involves building a representation of selected phenomena in some domain. High-quality conceptual-modeling work is important because it facilitates early detection and correction of system development errors. It also plays an increasingly important role in activities like business process reengineering and documentation of best-practice data and process models in enterprise resource planning systems. Yet little research has been undertaken on many aspects of conceptual modeling. In this paper, we propose a framework to motivate research that addresses the following fundamental question: How can we model the world to better facilitate our developing, implementing, using, and maintaining more valuable information systems? The framework comprises four elements: conceptual-modeling grammars, conceptual-modeling methods, conceptual-modeling scripts, and conceptual-modeling contexts. We provide examples of the types of research that have already been undertaken on each element and illustrate research opportunities that exist.

Maturity models in the hospital information systems management initial research

Os modelos de maturidade são instrumentos facilitadores da gestão das organizações, incluindo a gestão da sua função sistemas de informação, não sendo exceção as organizações hospitalares. Neste artigo apresenta-se uma investigação inicial que visa o desenvolvimento de um abrangente modelo de maturidade para a gestão dos sistemas de informação hospitalares. O desenvolvimento deste modelo justifica-se porque os modelos de maturidade atuais no domínio da gestão dos sistemas informação hospitalares ainda se encontram numa fase embrionária de desenvolvimento, sobretudo porque são pouco detalhados, não disponibilizam ferramentas para determinação da maturidade e não apresentam as características dos estágios de maturidade estruturadas por diferentes fatores de influência.

Interpretative research in information systems: two qualitative research design projects

In a scientific research project is important to define the underlying philosophical orientation of the project, because this will influence the choices made in respect of scientific methods used, as well as the way they will be applied. It is crucial, therefore, that the philosophy and research design strategy are consistent with each other. These questions become even more relevant in qualitative research. Historically, the interpretive research philosophy is more associated to the scientific areas of social sciences and humanities where the subjectivity inherent to human intervention is more explicitly defined. Information systems field are, primarily, trapped in computer science field, though it also integrates issues related with management and organizations field. This shift from a purely technological guidance for the consideration of the problems of management and organizations has fostered the rise of research projects according to the interpretive philosophy and using qualitative methods. This paper explores the importance of alignment between the epistemological orientation and research design strategy, in qualitative research projects. As a result, it is presented two PhD projects, with different research design strategies, that are being developed in the technology and information systems field, in the light of the interpretive paradigm.

Conceptual models for designing information systems supporting the strategic analysis of technology environments

1 6 STRUCTURE OF THIS THESIS -Chapter I presents the motivations of this dissertation by illustrating two gaps in the current body of knowledge that are worth filling, describes the research problem addressed by this thesis and presents the research methodology used to achieve this goal. -Chapter 2 shows a review of the existing literature showing that environment analysis is a vital strategic task, that it shall be supported by adapted information systems, and that there is thus a need for developing a conceptual model of the environment that provides a reference framework for better integrating the various existing methods and a more formal definition of the various aspect to support the development of suitable tools. -Chapter 3 proposes a conceptual model that specifies the various enviromnental aspects that are relevant for strategic decision making, how they relate to each other, and ,defines them in a more formal way that is more suited for information systems development. -Chapter 4 is dedicated to the evaluation of the proposed model on the basis of its application to a concrete environment to evaluate its suitability to describe the current conditions and potential evolution of a real environment and get an idea of its usefulness. -Chapter 5 goes a step further by assembling a toolbox describing a set of methods that can be used to analyze the various environmental aspects put forward by the model and by providing more detailed specifications for a number of them to show how our model can be used to facilitate their implementation as software tools. -Chapter 6 describes a prototype of a strategic decision support tool that allow the analysis of some of the aspects of the environment that are not well supported by existing tools and namely to analyze the relationship between multiple actors and issues. The usefulness of this prototype is evaluated on the basis of its application to a concrete environment. -Chapter 7 finally concludes this thesis by making a summary of its various contributions and by proposing further interesting research directions.