Research Intelligence (CRIS) and the Cloud: A Review

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the cloud technology on current research information systems (CRIS). Based on an overview of published literature and on empirical evidence from surveys, the paper presents main characteristics, delivery models, service levels and general benefits of cloud computing. The second part assesses how the cloud computing challenges the research information management, from three angles: networking, specific benefits, and the ingestion of data in the cloud. The third part describes three aspects of the implementation of current research systems in the clouds, i.e. service models, requirements and potential risks and barriers. The paper concludes with some perspectives for future work. The paper is written for CRIS administrators and users, in order to improve research information management and to contribute to future development and implementation of these systems, but also for scholars and students who want to have detailed knowledge on this topic.Keywords: current research information systems (CRIS), research information management, cloud computing, data quality, data security Indeed, relieving research institutions from the responsibility of maintenance and back-up, enabling data sharing, offering the computing power of cloud servers and reducing the cost of implementing CRIS, constitute the major assets and arguments in favor of cloud computing as an option for research information management. On the other side, the security will remain a major issue because of the external hosting of important, strategic and partly sensitive data in the cloud, which often means outside of the research institute.