The current state and future perspectives of the research information infrastructure in Croatia

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the existing Croatian research information infrastructure and to outline a new model of the Croatian Current Research Information System (CroRIS), required for the systematical monitoring and evaluation of the research processes and output of the Croatian public research and higher education institutions, as well as for the increasing of their international visibility. Based on the results of the analysis of the existing research information infrastructure in Croatia, the general outline of the new CERIF-based CroRIS model is proposed. The analysis of the existing research information infrastructure showed that there are some functional parts which could be reused and/or used as a basis for the implementation of the proposed CroRIS model. The proposed model represents a concept which would allow a quality decision and science-policy making in Croatia. Keywords: Research information infrastructure, Current research information system, CRIS, Common European Research Information Format, CERIF, Croatian research information system, CroRIS, research evaluation JIOS, VOL. 43. NO. 1 (2019), PP. 15-31 MACAN AND PETRAK THE CURRENT STATE AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES...administrative decision-making processes. Besides, CRISs stimulate scientific excellence, making national research performance visible and expanding scientific and research collaboration at international and interdisciplinary levels [2]. It may also maximize cost efficiency and fairness of money distribution [3]. These systems can be implemented on an institutional, multi-institutional or a national level. Biesbendar et al. noted that there are different approaches towards the institutional management, processing and dissemination of research information and research data in different national science systems [4]. Transparent science and innovation policy based on the research performance indicators are especially important for the research communities in the science-periphery countries [5]. These communities strongly depend on the public finance resources. The transparency in money distribution as well as in setting research priorities and mapping of scientific excellence are therefore critical in the building and growth of the research activities.The data stored in CRIS's can be used for the evaluation purposes and/or datadriven decision making [6]- [9] provided that these data are complete, reliable, wellstructured and organized. Therefore, the system should comply with the guidance on managing records prescribed by the ISO 15489-1:2016 standard [10].The use of appropriate metadata formats is also very important. MARC21 format, Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) or Dublin Core (DC) are usually used for publications description [11], [12], while the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) is a standard research information data exchange format. CERIF is recommended by the European Union to its member states in order to achieve interoperability between their information systems gathering data about resear...

David among Goliaths: Open access publishing in scientific (semi‐)periphery

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The impact of Plan S on scholarly journals from less developed European countries

“…To sum up, even the basic Plan S requirements for OA journals, publishing platforms, and OA repositories may be out of reach for many small publishers and/or institutions that maintain their digital repositories. Publishers from countries with centrally financed and developed national OA platforms, such as Croatia ( 17 ), are in a slightly better position.…”