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Hola,

Para los seguidores de este blog, os informo que "me he mudado" a wordpress. A los que queráis continuar siguiéndome, me podéis encontrar en: https://investigarlainvestigacion.wordpress.com/

¡Hasta la vista!
Anna.

euroCRIS 2016 conference in St. Andrews, Scotland

From 9th to 11th of June I attended and participated in the euroCRIS conference held in St. Andrews, Scotland, a beautiful town where the St. Andrews University is located.

The title of the conference was: CRIS2016: Communicating and measuring research responsibly: profiling, metrics, impact, interoperability.

You can access the program with the links and proceedings of the presentations, here.

There were a lot of interesting presentations. I found really interesting the keynote presentation of Barend Mons.

I also presented my paper talking about ‘Can machines understand what researcher look for? Conceptualizing the research world.’ (you can access the paper in the previous program link)

In summary, I heard very interesting projects all related to two main themes:

• Can we have more and better research indicators and metrics, taking into account the new digital research scenario? Yes, and we need it.  
• Can we order the amount of information that are in the Internet to help researchers in their work? Yes, and it is longer necessary,

     In this way, we can talk about projects like: snowball metrics, Dspace/CRIS openSource, InCites, SELRIM project, Thor project and so on. And also projects about semantic searches solutions, like the one that we are starting in SIGMAAIE, that I presented.

Photos of my presentation:

Other presentations photos:

In my opinion, euroCRIS is a good space to interchange initiatives and projects related to research but I think that, in general, the cooperation should be higher in this kind of forums, anyway it was interesting, and now a have a lot of ideas and new interesting and valuable contacts!.

Report on EUNIS – euroCRIS joint survey on CRIS and IR

Recently it has been published the final report of the CRIS/IR survey. That was a joint initiative of EUNIS and euroCRIS.

The goal of this survey was to collect information on CRIS (Current Research Information Systems) and IR (Open Access institutional repositories) technological solutions that support Research, and to analyses their links to other systems used at Higher Education Institutions.

The authors of the final report are:

Lígia Maria Ribeiro has been Principal Researcher at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto since 2002. She was pro-rector at the University of Porto between 2006 and 2014, being responsible for ICT. Between 2004 and 2006, she was President of EUNIS, after being Vice-President for two years. She is presently a member of the EUNIS Board of Directors. 

Michele Mennielli is responsible for International Relations and Business Development at Cineca, the Italian Consortium of University. He cooperates with different international organizations to create cross-national collaborations and projects. He is Board Member and Secretary of EUNIS; Member of the DSpace Steering Group and Board Member Executive for External Relations of euroCRIS. 

Pablo de Castro works as Open Access Project Officer at LIBER, the Association of European Research Libraries in The Hague. He is an expert in Open Access and research information workflows and management systems, an area he›s worked at for GrandIR Ltd and the EDINA National Data Centre in Edinburgh. MSc/BSc in Physics from UCM, he has a background as Institutional Repository manager for the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Besides being an ORCID Ambassador, Pablo is also serving on the euroCRIS Board as leader of the CRIS/IR Interoperability Task Group.

I know in person the three autors and I can say that they are great professionals with a great reputation in the research scope.

The CRIS/IR survey was launched in April 2015 and was based on a previous initiative to collect information on the CRIS and IR infrastructure available in Portugal.

The goal of the survey was want to know about:

- How these two systems interoperate?

- Which data and metadata are made available and how these are being used?

The survey was distributed via mailing lists to the scientific community and institutions. 

There was wide participation from the community, there was 84 full responses from 20 different countries.


The two main questions the Survey tried to answer were: are CRISs gradually replacing IRs? Are the two systems overlapping in their functionalities? From the results we have collected, both questions seem to get a negative answer. The two systems are clearly complementary: while IRs are the preferred choice for managing research publications and dissertations and thesis, CRISs are regularly chosen for managing the institutional research information as a whole including metadata for research papers.

Some conclusions are:

About the use:

• 62% of the institutions have both systems: CRIS and IR
• 18% uses the same software

Aboout their contents:

• CRIS systems hold a large variety of contents: metadata for research publications (81%), projects (76%), and reporting features (75%)
• IR stores mainly metadata and full-text for publication (96%), dissertations and thesis (86%).
• DSPACE is the most used software for IR (56%) 

About the interoperability:

• Almost 65% of the institutions have linked their CRIS&IR (so, there are closely related)
• CRIS is also the product which links with legacy systems, such finances or HR
• There are little integration between LMS (Learning management systems) and CRIS o IR.

Another important aspect the survey collected information on was the management of CRISs systems. This will usually vary from one institution to the next, but the conclusion is that Libraries and the Research & Innovation or Research & Development units have a prominent role on the different aspects of CRIS management.

As a key conclusion, both CRISs and IRs are considered valuable tools to support Institutions in the research assessment exercises for both university and author evaluation.

You can access to the final report here.

What about research assessment systems?

Research assessment systems are a very important and complex issue in the research scope, in this way, I found an interesting matrix that, in my opinion, defines very well, at a high level, what research is, and what it can or must be evaluated:

Source: https://www.researchtrends.com/issue23-may-2011/the-multi-dimensional-research-assessment-matrix/

In this matrix of assessment, we can clearly distinguish the main research topics, so we can see:

The research main actors like the researcher, the research group, the department, the institution, or the research fields. Based on this, we can make a series of questions related to the assessment:  the purpose is it to inform the allocation of research funding, to improve performance, or to increase regional engagement?

Then there are questions about which output dimensions should be considered: scholarly impact, innovation and social benefit, or sustainability? 

In this way, describes four assessment methodologies: peer review, which provides a judgment based on expert knowledge; end-user reviews, such as customer satisfaction; quantitative indicators, including bibliometric and other types of measures; self-evaluation.

These four methodologies can be — and often are — combined into a multi-dimensional assessment.

Bibliometric indicators have a central role in research assessment systems, and the main types are: basic indicators (easy to obtain and available for decades), normalized indicators (correcting for particular biases) and advanced indicators (based on advanced networks analyses)

You can see all this information in this article. This article if from 2011, so it’s not new, but I think that the concepts that appeared in the matrix, are key concepts and a good summary of what research scope is. Do you agree? 

EUNIS Rectors conference 2016

Last 14-16 of April I attend the EUNIS Rectors’ Conference 2016 in Krakow (Poland). This year's edition, entitled “Smart European University”, the main goal was to explain how IT may help European universities in the changing landscape. During the 3 day-conference, different aspects were addressed related to the future of the university and the digital revolution where it is involved.

Some of the topics that were discussed in the meeting were the Rankings and the university-business relation: the innovation triangle, the innovation networks, the impact of online learning and the cloud-based models. It was also remarked the important role of online learning, the cloud and social media as key factors for the change in the university.

During the course of the sessions I participated in a “Panel Discussion” entitled: ‘IT Consortia/organizations – to which extent they may support universities?’ where representatives of the main European universities consortium, SIGMA among them, talked about the operation, the activities (software and services that we offer), how the collaboration with universities it is done and the role that we provide them. The “Panel discussion” was followed with keen interest by the attendance that took advantage of the questioning time to deepen their knowledge of the topic.

Very interesting sessions were I have the opportunity to meet some interesting people at european level to know more about this university digital revolution that we all must face.

Hablando de ciencia ciudadana...

Un término interesante, a la vez que llamativo... he oído hablar bastante últimamente de él y me he decido a escribir al respecto.

Como siempre, lo primero que hago es consultar a mi amiga wikipedia, que me ha explicado lo siguiente:

“Se entiende por ciencia ciudadana a la investigación científica llevada a cabo por una suma de colaboradores, en su totalidad o en parte por científicos y profesionales junto a gente común. Formalmente, la ciencia ciudadana ha sido definida como "la recopilación y análisis sistemático de datos, el desarrollo de la tecnología, las pruebas de los fenómenos naturales, y la difusión de estas actividades por los investigadores sobre una base principalmente vocacional". ¹

El documento "Green Paper on Citizen Science: Citizen Science for Europe" describe la Ciencia Ciudadana como "el compromiso del público general en actividades de investigación científica; cuando los ciudadanos contribuyen activamente a la ciencia con su esfuerzo intelectual o dando soporte al conocimiento con sus herramientas o recursos. Los participantes proveen datos experimentales o equipos a los investigadores. Los voluntarios, a la vez que aportan valor a la investigación, adquieren nuevos conocimientos o habilidades, y un mejor conocimiento del método científico de una manera atractiva. Como resultado de este escenario abierto, colaborativo y transversal, las interacciones entre ciencia-sociedad-políticas investigadoras mejoran, conduciendo a una investigación más democrática, basada en la toma de decisiones basada en evidencias informadas surgidas del método científico, total o parcialmente, por parte de científicos amateur o no profesionales."^2”

Una vez más, hablamos de ciencia abierta. La idea de ciencia abierta, de la que ya he hablado previamente, se basa, entre otras cosas, en la necesidad de dialogo y compromiso de la comunidad científica con la sociedad, donde la colaboración de participantes sin formación científica y otros actores sociales en la co-creación de conocimiento y la discusión sobre temas globales que nos afectan a todos,  potencian los resultados. Ello está limando límites entre científicos profesionales y amateurs. Así mismo, permite tener mayor control de las prácticas fraudulentas en ciencia al permitir el escrutinio público como parte importante para aplicar acciones correctivas, tal y como se afirma en icsu.org (*)

Así, dado que los datos científicos y el conocimiento resultante, se ha considerado generalmente como bienes  públicos y como bases fundamentales para el  juicio humano, la innovación y el bienestar de la sociedad, hace cada vez más claros los beneficios de ser abiertos para proporcionar un reúso comercial de los recursos públicos para incrementar los resultados y para evaluar tendencias económicas y sociales.

Entonces surge la pregunta de si el sector privado debería pagar por acceder y usar los datos financiados de forma pública, aunque parece que la tendencia es que no se deba discriminar entre lo privado (for-profit) y lo público (non-for-profit).

Así que, de nuevo, el dilema está servido, como en el resto de temas, estamos claramente ante una revolución en el mundo de la ciencia, aunque la  tendencia hacia lo abierto, es obvia. Un interesante escenario.

(*) ICSU, el concilio internacional para la ciencia, es una organización no gubernamental compuesta íntegramente por organismos científicos nacionales e internacionales, que tiene como misión el fortalecimiento de la ciencia internacional en beneficio de la sociedad.

Para ello, moviliza el conocimiento y los recursos de la comunidad científica internacional para identificar y abordar las principales cuestiones de importancia para la ciencia y la sociedad, facilitar la interacción entre científicos y su participación internacional y estimular el diálogo entre científicos, gobiernos, sociedad civil y el  sector privado. Muy interesante leer los contenidos de su web.

La innovación en la universidad

El pasado jueves 25 de febrero, Xavier Marcet, experto en Consultoria de innovación y presidente de Lead To Change, una empresa de consultoría en innovación estratégica que tiene por misión ayudar a las empresas a desplegar modelos de innovación muy orientados a resultados y a darles apoyo en el desarrollo de sus proyectos de innovación y emprendimiento corporativo, vino a darnos una charla a SIGMA, sobre tendencias en las universidades.

Resultó ser una charla muy interesante en la que destacó que la universidad está cambiando, o mejor dicho, tiene que cambiar para adaptarse a este modelo cada vez más globalizado en el que vivimos. Están apareciendo nuevos modelos de universidades (universidades creadas por académicos, con nuevos objetivos, etc...). La marca es importante. Por ejemplo, conseguir un fellowship de Harvard que se puede conseguir con un año de estancia en esa universidad y otros modelos innovadores.

También destacó que modelos como la formación on-line y las clases invertidas (flipped classrooms) están revolucionando la universidad. 

Hasta hace un tiempo, un título universitario era un certificado para acceder al mundo laboral y, aunque la cuotas de matrículas sean elevadas, se supone que las puedes recuperar con el trabajo que hagas después gracias a este título. Se está viendo que ello ya no es así. Las cuotas siguen aumentando y el endeudamiento de los estudiantes es mayor y no pueden devolver los préstamos que solicitaron para estudiar.

La esperanza de vida aumenta, y las universidades apuestan fuerte por el Life long learning. 

Viendo todos estos escenarios, comentó que las universidades quizás tengan que reinventarse y tienen que apostar por la innovación. Actualmente, las universidades no son grandes innovadores (se habla de transferencia de conocimiento a la empresa, pero eso no es innovación en sí). Tienen que serlo para ser más competitivas y poderse posicionar correctamente en los Rankings que, a aunque a nadie les gustan, están ahí midiendo a las universidades.

Parece ser que la disrupción en la universidad llegará y de forma bastante rápida y las universidades deben estar preparadas para el cambio y adaptarse.

Para adaptarse, destacó estos 4 grandes cambios: Modelo sostenible de creación de valor. Gobernanza/liderazgo. Transformación digital/innovación. Gestión/atracción del talento.

Finalmente, recomendó un interesante libro sobre innovación en las universidades: Innovative universities.

Me parecieron unas reflexiones muy interesantes, realmente estamos ante un momento de cambio que también puede generar grandes oportunidades.

Destaco una frase que dijo Marcet en la charla: La pregunta clave es ¿Qué nos pedirán nuestras universidades que todavía no nos han pedido?