NARCIS, Integrating CRIS, OAI and Web Crawling

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• NARCIS, Integrating CRIS, OAI and Web Crawling
• Elly Dijk, Arjan Hogenaar and Marga van Meel
• Department of Research Information
• CRIS 2006
• Bergen (Norway), 11-13 May 2005

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Outline

• KNAW Research Information
• NARCIS
• Background of the NARCIS project
• Content of NARCIS
• Advantages for the users
• NARCIS techniques
• End-users tests
• Future plans

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KNAW Research Information

• National focal point research information
• Dutch Research Database (NOD) the national CRIS
• Scientific communication (thematic databases,
  overview articles e.g. about nanotechnology)
• Research information system and repository of the
  Academy
• Development of NARCIS

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What is NARCIS?
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NARCIS is a portal that combines

• Structured research information, about current
  research, researchers, and research institutes
• Information from academic repositories, (full
  text) publications, and others research results
• Information from websites of research
  institutes datasets, digital publications, and
  news items
• All these types of information are searchable at
  the same time.

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Partners in the NARCIS project

• Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
  (KNAW), department of Research Information
• Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research
  (NWO)
• Association of Universities in the Netherlands
  (VSNU)
• Information Centre of the Radboud University of
  Nijmegen, (RU-UCI)
• Funded by the DARE programme

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DARE Digital Academic REpositories

• Joint initiative by the Dutch universities, the
  KNAW, NWO and the National Library
• DAREnet gives free access to academic research
  output in the Netherlands.
• DAREnet contains now about 70.000 digital files
  from 16 institutes

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Goals of the NARCIS project

• Giving an overview of research in the
  Netherlands
• Central place for searching all the different
  types of data
• Data collection via the already existing
  administrative systems of the participating
  institutes
• Registering of data once only
• Minimization of administrative report burden for
  researchers and institutes

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Content of NARCIS

• Information on 400,000 items
• Research institutes - profiles, addresses,
  programmes, projects
• Researchers - expertise, addresses, projects,
  publications
• Research activities - research programmes and
  projects
• (web) publications - metadata, full text
• Datasets - metadata
• News items - webpages of research institutes

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Advantages for the users

• The different types of research information are
  searchable at the same time (one-stop-shopping)
• Free access to Dutch academic full text
  publications and other research results
• Up-to-date information data gathered in an
  early stage of the registration process
• High quality information editors select the
  sources of NARCIS
• Overview of Dutch scientific output
• Scientific information also from repositories and
  websites

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• NARCIS part two
• Technical background
• User Surveys
• Future Developments

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Applied Techniques

• METIS-NARCIS exchange schema
• NWOdelfi-METIS interface
• OAI-PMH
• Web-crawling
• Collexis categorising
• RSS

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METIS

• Dutch Research Information System
• Used by all Dutch universities
• For both research management and information
  supply
• Information on research groups, individual
  researchers,
• research output

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Exchanging METIS info

• XML-schema (CERIF-based) developed by KNAW, NWO
  
• and RU Implemented in METIS
• For service-provider accessible via URL
• XML-export to service provider automatically
  generated
• Data-provider no longer needs to create reports
  of new
• entered research projects in its METIS-system

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Interface NWOdelfi-METIS

• enables xml-data exchange between METIS and
• NWOdelfi (with a copy to NARCIS)
• uses webservices with xml-SOAP

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Advantages of the interface

• minimization of administrative report burden
• NWO granted projects sent automatically to the
  university-METIS systems (with a CC to NARCIS)
• In METIS-system entered research output data
  (bibliographic descriptions of publications)
  automatically sent to NWO (with a CC to NARCIS)

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OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for
Metadata Harvesting)

• Darenet is a good example
• protocol for harvesting metadata descriptions
• (xml-documents) of full-text records in a
• repository

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Web-crawling

• used for harvesting of data not available via
• METIS or NWO or repositories
• focused on non-university research institutes
• J-spider based
• spidering of news-items and of
  web-publications
• (i.e. digital publications available on
  webpages of
• research institutes)

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Categorising

• indexing all the data retrievable via NARCIS
• via one terminology system
• Dutch Research Database classification system
• is used
• first attempt via Lucene search engine
• now via Collexis software

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METIS
Web-forms
NWO
Categorizer
NARCIS
Webpages
Institutional Repositories
NOD
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Notification tool RSS feed

• content RSS-feed normally news-provider
• based (see BBC RSS-feed)
• In NARCIS RSS-feed search action based
• User decides which information he regularly
• will be notified on

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User Surveys
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Preliminary results

• two user surveys conducted
• amongst repository specialists (library
  personnel)
• amongst researchers, policy advisors and science
  education officers
• goals of the survey
• impression and functionality of the NARCIS
  homepage
• search and limit functionality test
• imput for further improvement of the site

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Outcomes user surveys 1

• NARCIS-webview appreciated
• Retrieval of web publications is value adding
• service
• Quality of research information is high
• Broad range of search options and search
  performance

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Outcomes user surveys 2

• complexity of NARCIS-portal urges a need for
  extra
• clarification of the possibilities of the
  contents and search tools
• limiting options too complicated
• users see NARCIS as a new independent
  information system,
• instead as a shell around existing ones
• presenting search results not only by relevance
  but also
• chronologically

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Outcomes user surveys 3

• presentation of information that has been
  spidered
• leads to some confusion

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Future developments technical

• automatic categorisation of the contents via
  Collexis
• working with Digital Identifiers (for authors,
  
• institutes and objects) in order to connect
  the Dutch
• CRIS systems to the repositories
• including CV-information of Dutch research into
  
• NARCIS (PROMAS)

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Future developments organisational

• installation of a NARCIS Advisory Board, formed
  by
• KNAW
• NWO
• VSNU
• plus SURF
• the Advisory Board will decide in which way
• NARCIS will be developed

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Conclusions

• national research information portal
• 400,000 items
• many different information types
• one stop shopping
• RSS-feed
• new xml exhange schema

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Poster presentations

during the breaks

• WWW.NARCIS.INFO