e-Infrastructure for Scholarly Publications

 

Elly Dijk1

 

e-mail: elly.dijk@bureau.knaw.nl

 

In the research infrastructure scholarly publications (with for example patents) form a major part. They are important for the authors as results of their research, and the publications can be used by other researchers for further research. The institute where the researcher is working wants to show their publication production. The researchers and their institutes will also use the publications to get funds for further research, while for research managers it is necessary to have an overview of the scientific output to allocate the funding.

 

Academic communication is changing. In these years of Internet it is not enough to publish in books or journals in paper versions, but for a greater visibility it is necessary to publish digital publications. Since the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) more and more institutes want that these full text publications are freely available worldwide. A way to make the output available is to store the publications in institutional Open Access Repositories (OAR).

 

A Current Research Information System (CRIS) conforming to the standard CERIF could be a key component in the e-infrastructure. A scholarly publication is related to one or more authors, to the organisational unit(s) employing the author(s), and to the project in which the research was done. And the project can be related to a funding programme of a funding organisation (organisational unit). A CRIS gives the structure and the possibility to interoperate the metadata of CRIS in all stages of the research cycle. The metadata in the administrative system (for example persons, organisational units, projects and programmes) can be used in de repositories of publications.

 

The use of CERIF-CRIS provides policy makers with the national and international oversight required for decision-making in a global research environment.