Current Research Information Systems (CRIS)
A current research information system (CRIS) is an information system owned by a research organisation — such as a university or a research institute — that handles the organisation's (meta)data about its research activity: who does research, in which units, on which projects, with which funding, and with which results. CRIS systems are also known as research information management systems (RIM systems, or RIMS).
What a CRIS holds
The reference model is CERIF, the Common European Research Information Format. It describes research information as entities connected by typed, dated relationships:
| kind | entities |
|---|---|
| base | Person, Organisation Unit, Project |
| results | Publication, Patent, Product (software, datasets, artefacts) |
| infrastructure | Equipment, Facility, Service |
| context | Funding, Event, Prize, Qualification, Expertise and Skills, CV, Citation, Metrics, … |
The relationships carry most of the meaning: a person is author of a publication, member of a unit from a date to another, coordinator of a project funded by a programme. Teaching is not part of the model.
Why an organisation needs one
- Enter once, reuse everywhere. A researcher records a result once; the CRIS turns it into CVs, publication lists, project reports and institutional Web pages.
- Overview for management. Research managers and evaluators see the whole research activity of the organisation, for strategy, reporting and assessment.
- Interoperability. Standard metadata let a CRIS exchange data with repositories, funders, national registries and other CRISs.
- The research context of results. A publication, a patent or a dataset is recorded together with the project, the funding and the people that produced it.
CERIF and euroCRIS
CERIF began as a recommendation of the European Union to its member states in 1991, and was substantially extended in 2000. Since 2002 it has been maintained by euroCRIS, an international not-for-profit association founded that year, which brings together CRIS experts, users and vendors and promotes the interoperability of research information. euroCRIS also runs the DRIS directory of research information systems.
CRIS and institutional repository
The two are often confused, and often sold together. An institutional repository keeps and disseminates the content of research outputs — the full texts, the datasets — usually in open access. A CRIS records the information about research — people, units, projects, funding, results and their relationships — for management and reporting. A CRIS typically acts as the registration point for the repository's metadata, and many products bundle both.
Systems
| system | by | notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pure | Elsevier | commercial; widespread in Europe and Australia |
| Converis | Clarivate | commercial |
| Symplectic Elements | Digital Science | commercial; also used for faculty activity reporting |
| DSpace-CRIS | 4Science | open source, built on the DSpace repository platform |
| VIVO | open-source community, born at Cornell University | researcher profiles and linked open data, rather than management |
| IRIS | CINECA | the CRIS of most Italian universities and public research institutes; built on DSpace-CRIS |
CRIS @ UniBo
The CRIS of the Alma Mater Studiorum–Università di Bologna can be found at https://cris.unibo.it. It is based on the IRIS (Institutional Research Information System) technology by CINECA — which is why APICe mostly uses the acronym "IRIS" to refer to the Alma Mater CRIS.
Beyond research
A CRIS covers research only. In a university the other activities of academic staff are usually handled by other systems: teaching by student information systems and course catalogues (in Italy, for instance, CINECA's ESSE3 for student careers), third mission and service by ad-hoc reporting.
One category of systems does span all of them. Faculty activity reporting (FAR) systems, widespread in North America, collect a faculty member's teaching, research and service in one place, and turn that single data set into annual reports, CVs and promotion and tenure dossiers. Examples are Watermark Faculty Success (formerly Digital Measures Activity Insight) and Interfolio Faculty180; Symplectic Elements, born as a CRIS, is also used this way. Institutions often run a FAR system and a CRIS side by side, feeding data from one to the other.
How APICe relates to all this is explained in APICe as a CRIS (logged-in users).
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