European VIRTA pilot – eurooppalaisen julkaisutietovirran pilotointi Ohjausryhmä: Tutkimushallinnon tietovirrat ja tutkimustietovaranto 4.12.2017

Background and aims of the pilot project Science policy and research evaluation at all levels of the European Research Area need support from reliable, comparable, and comprehensive information on research activity, productivity and quality. Commercial databases, Web of Science or Scopus, do not provide complete coverage of research output in any field, especially in SSH fields A pilot project on European VIRTA was launched in ENRESSH meeting Sofia, March 2017 The target is to explore the use of Finnish VIRTA concept across different countries in order to create a European publication information service The pilot project also produces a commensurate dataset for certain bibliometric analyses

Principles for the European Research Infomation Service Data transfer from national or local CRISes in a standardized format – annually or more frequently All information freely available in a public portal Via open APIs, the information usable for various purposes National and institutional CRISes or other publication databases XML files European Research Information Service API Using services (e.g. funders) Public portal Other use, e.g. CVs Publication input service (for non-CRIS organizations)

Pilot project – practical issues Participating countries have reported their complete publication metadata from the years 2014-15 to VIRTA: Norway: University of Oslo Flanders: University of Antwerpen Spain: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) Finland: University of Helsinki, University of Jyväskylä, Tampere University of Technology Data format: The pilots exported their own data into a CSV model file and converted the file into XML by using a CSV-XML tool. Fields of science The pilots mapped their publications into FoS classification Finland and Oslo cover all fields, Antwerpen and Madrid only SSH

VIRTA pilot: number of publications

Issues of data comparability Publications to be included Publication types to be included Publication type mapping Disciplines Detailed data format Required and optional fields and local additions in data model

Issues of data comparability: publications to be included The countries vary in terms of inclusion of different publications in their databases Some databases are limited to only ”scientific” Conclusion: No need for limitations in terms of which publications are included. For comparability and further analysis, it is necessary to be able to separate different types of publications from each other in a consistent way. A need for standard defininitions of ”scientific”, ”peer-reviewed” etc.

Issues of data comparability: publications types to be included The countries vary in terms of inclusion of different publication types in their databases: Scientific only or non-scholarly publications as well (professional and popular books, articles, reports etc.)? Conference presentations, short abstracts inluded? Other research activities (expertise work, reviewer, awards etc.)? Conclusion: No need for limitations in terms of inclusion criteria. For comparability and further analysis, it is more important that the publication types are consistent.

Issues of data comparability: Publication type mapping All countries and citation databases have their own classifications for publication types A mapping procedure can be applied but still the data are not fully comparable since the definitions of for example ”article”, ”book chapter” or ”scientific” vary Conclusion: A need for an international standard for publication types classification and their definitions.

Issues of data comparability: Publication type mapping Finland / Madrid Flanders 1=peer-reviewed / 0 = non peer-reviewed Norway Peer-reviewed articles A1 Journal article, original research VABB-1: journal article 1 3= Article in series (ISSN) A2 Review article A3 Book section VABB-4: book chapter 2= Article in book (no ISSN) A4 Conference proceedings VABB-5: proceedings paper Non peer-reviewed articles B1 Non-refereed journal articles B2 Book section B3 Non-refereed conference proceedings Monographs C1 Book VABB-2: monograph 1= Monograph C2 Edited book VABB-3: edited book Professional D1 Article in a trade journal D2 Article in a professional book D3 Professional conference proceedings D4 Development or research report D5 Textbook, professional manual or guide D6 Edited professional book Popular E1 Popularised article, newspaper article E2 Popularised monograph E3 Edited popular book

VIRTA pilot: Publications by types

Issues of data comparability: Disciplines A mapping procedure can be applied but still there may be variation in the definitions of the fields The practices vary by country Classification: 1) FoS classification fully , 2) FoS with local extensions, 3) other Coverage of different fields of science The field of science is defined by 1) the publication itself, 2) the journal of the publication or 3) the author of the publication, 4) the organizational unit of the author Only one or more fieds per publication. Conclusion: All countries should use FoS in their databases. The field of scienc to be defined for a publication by following a common rule.

Issues of comparability: Detailed data format The pilot countries did not report having significant problems in converting their own datasets in the common format The data collected in the pilot has its highest quality and consistency in terms of the bibliographic data meanwhile the classifications vary Conclusions: The detailed data format can be agreed between countries no matter which systems or technologies they are using in their own national publication data collection.

Issues of data comparability: Required and optional field and local additions Only the core information were required as mandatory n the pilot: publication title, publication year, authors, publication type, field of science, organization authors The other fields were optional, but necessary for co-publication identification, e.g. ISSN/ISBN, sorce title, volume, number, page numbers The pilots had some local additions which were not included in the pilot Abstracts etc. Conclusion: The list of mandatory should be very short and local additions should be allowed.

Next steps Additional data from the pilots More detailed biblliographic data Coverage of all fields of science Publication channel lists and rankings from other countries Other countries can still join Bibliometric analysis The data collected in the pilot has its highest quality and consistency in terms of the bibliographic data Focus on journal analysis

VIRTA pilot: Publications by Finnish Publication Forum levels