1. European Publication Information Service - a Pilot Project
OKM:n bibliometriikkaseminaari

2. On the Agenda, but still unsolved…
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, and in SSH fields they suffer from severe lack of coverage of publications in books and languages other than English.

3. Two of the recommendations:
On the agenda, but still unsolved... A report in 2010 to European Science Foundation and the British, Dutch, French, and German research councils
Two of the recommendations:
Negotiate expansions and/or a new database with the suppliers of Web of Science and/or Scopus
Integrate national and institutional documentation systems

4. On the Agenda, but still unsolved…
A report in 2014 to European Parliamentary Research Service
The key recommendation:
The development of a European integrated research information system having features of a distributed infrastructure, inter-connecting the existing national research information systems, facilitated by CERIF – the European standards for research information systems (

5. On the Agenda, but still unsolved…
At the Strategic Membership Meeting of euroCRIS in November 2016, various international organisations agreed to explore the possibilities to cooperate in order to come to/create a European Research Information Infrastructure:
EARMA (European Research Managers), Science Europe (funders), OpenAIRE, German Research Academies, JISC, ORCiD and euroCRIS...

6. ENRESSH network
The “European Network for Research Evaluation in the Social Sciences and the Humanities” is a COST Action (European Cooperation in Science and Technology)
ENRESSH Working Group 3: Databases and uses of data for understanding SSH research
The main objective: “To reflect upon the standardisation and the interoperability of current research information systems (CRIS) dedicated to research outcomes from the social sciences and humanities (SSH)”
One of the tasks is to “Design a roadmap for a European bibliometric database”
Current activities of WG3, e.g.
Survey of national databases (survey)
Non-Bibliometric Analysis of Book Evaluation
A pilot study working towards an integrated European database of SSH research output

7. Pilot project
A pilot project in collaboration of CSC and ENRESSH on European VIRTA was launched in March 2017
The target is to explore the use of Finnish VIRTA Publication Information Service concept across different countries in order to create a European database
The pilot project also produces a dataset for certain bibliometric analyses
Pilot universities
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
Participating countries have reported their complete publication metadata from the years to VIRTA

8. 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)

9. VIRTA pilot: number of publications
Note: Finland and Oslo cover all fields, Antwerpen and Madrid only SSH

10. 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

11. VIRTA pilot: Publications by Finnish Publication Forum levels

12. Bibliometric analysis
Next steps
The European VIRTA database will be held open to new participants: 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
Current focus on journal analysis
Creation of a more general data model
Standardization of classifications

13. Hanna-Mari Puuska
Development Manager