Download presentation
Presentation is loading. Please wait.
1
European VIRTA pilot – current situation
ENRESSH meeting, WG3 November 8, 2017
2
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 the Finnish VIRTA system across different countries in order to create a European publication information service The pilot project also produces a commensurate dataset for certain bibliometric analyses
3
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)
4
Pilot project – practical issues
Participating countries have reported their complete publication metadata from the years 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
5
VIRTA pilot: number of publications
6
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
7
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.
8
Issues of data comparability: publication 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.
9
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: Need for international agreement on definition of publication types and classification of publication types. The mapping becomes more difficult as more countries are added.
10
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
11
VIRTA pilot: Publications by types
12
Issues of data comparability: Publication type mapping strategies
Take one system as starting point and try to map everything to that Hard because publication types do not always match nicely Lowest common denominator: limited set of very broad categories Loss of information Lowest common denominator with refimenents Refinements used where possible Broader categories used elsewhere
13
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, 3) the author of the publication, or 4) the organizational unit of the author Only one or more fields per publication? Proposal: All countries should use FoS for the project. A publication’s field should be decided upon using a ’cognitive’ system, based on the publication or publication channel.
14
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 bibliographic data collected in the pilot is of high quality and consistency; most differences and variations are related to the classifications Conclusion: 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.
15
Issues of data comparability: Required and optional field and local additions
Only the core information wasrequired as mandatory in 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, source 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 fields should be very short. Local additions should be allowed.
16
Additional data from the pilots
Next steps Additional data from the pilots More detailed bibliographic 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
17
VIRTA pilot: Publications by Finnish Publication Forum levels
Similar presentations
© 2025 SlidePlayer.com. Inc.
All rights reserved.