In Germany most laws relating to higher education describe a duty for universities to publish research reports. Most of these universities use a database to collect and manage these reports. Research reporting is not very popular to individual scientists. It costs time and energy, which could better be used to do research itself. Internet gives you the chance, to do unpopular things in a more easy way. The aim of this paper is to show the steps of introducing a system of on-line research reporting through a central database coupled with WWW and decentralised input and on-line bibliography. Because publishing is most important for scientists, this system will be coupled with the possibility of electronic publishing. This will have advantages to the scientists as well as to the research institution:
finally the system will have automatic tools to control and remind of topicality and for quick evaluation.
In the past, every two or three years scientists in Germany are required to give reports about their research projects in paper form, on disks, or anything else, in order to publish it as a report of research activities of the whole university. Most of these universities use a database to collect and manage these reports. Many of them publish books, or CD-ROMs, and finally on the World Wide Web.
Research reporting is not very popular to individual scientists. It costs time and energy, which could better be given to do research itself. But it is a chance for the research institution, to give information about topical research to:
Internet gives you the chance, to do unpopular things in a more easy way and to kill two (or more) birds with one stone. The most important principle is: make things simple to do and do it only once.
First step was to develop a system called "Forschungsbericht on-line" (research report on-line), which enables scientists at our university to give input about their research projects to a central database. This could be done only by using a screen mask at their PC connected to Internet and fit out with WWW browser. On the database-server of the computer centre of our university is located the relational database db2 of IBM. The interaction of database and users are organised by SQL (structured query language). The presentation into WWW is made by HTML and JAVA-script. This system offers several advantages:
The structure of the university with faculties, departments (institutes) and chairs or other (specialised) units was build up in the database. The system-administrator delegates the right to feed information into their part of the system to the faculties by giving them a password. The dean of the faculty (or an authorised representative) can give further passwords to his/her departments and/or chairs. If you will work with the system in "active" (you will give an information input) or "passive" way (you will look for information), you only have to feed your WWW-browser with the
URL: http://www.uni-kassel.de/forschungsbericht/
Looking at the screen mask there are three ways of working:
Looking at the structure of the university in the main part of the mask you can go to that (sub)part, where you want to have information from.
Going to the investigation module "Recherche in/nach" on the left side you can feed keywords to find special information. You can look for persons, that are involved in research projects, you can look for research projects related to keywords or you can look to projects financed by special funding institutions.
Going to the input module "Eingaben vornehmen" on the left side, you can feed the system with information. Prerequisite is that you have a password for the part, you want to give your input.
You can decide whether you want to give input about new projects or you want to update information of running projects. The input mask contains the features common for reporting about research: persons related to the projects, titles, abstracts, running time, financing by funding institutions, co-operations, keywords and publications.
Finishing input you have three possibilities. If you will work further on with the project, because you have to look for some additional information or some better phrasing, you can say: not public ("nicht öffentlich"). So the project will be saved onto the database, but it can not be seen on-line at WWW. Next time you are working with the system, you can call up information about this project from database. Only when you are satisfied with your report, you say: public ("öffentlich"), when closing input. Now information is visible on-line for all visitors using WWW.
Last you can "delete" a project, which is running out. Doing this the project will not disappear from the system, but it will be put into archives. This means that it can not be edited in any way, but it can be found using the investigation module "Recherche in/nach". You only have to set the status at "Auch abgelaufene Projekte im Archiv suchen" (looking for projects in archives, that are running out) to "Ja" (Yes).
To have a good way of presenting results by search engines, the keywords will be encoded as meta-tags. To ensure topicality automatically reminders will be installed. In the first phase it will be done by selecting the projects to their running-time and sending automatically generated letters to leaders of projects. In the second phase this procedure will be settled by automatically generated e-mails. If the deadline of a project exceeds a specific period of time and no reminding was successful, the project will be stored to archives.
If you want to give data about persons into the system, you will be led to a separate part of the database, where you can add new persons and correct the already available information about persons. Information about persons has only to be given into the database once. The system will couple this information with all projects, the persons are listed. Corrections or supplementations had to be made only once independent of the number of projects, the person are take part. The other way round persons can only be deleted in the database, if they are not connected to a project any longer.
The person data part of database is an important interface. At our university we are building up a system not only of research reporting but of bibliography and of other systems as address database or on-line programme of lectures. The way to do it is to have only one part in the whole systems, where you can add or correct person data.
Research reporting system will work as entrance into the whole information pool of the university. You can set up links to further personal information, you can set up links to more detailed information about results of research projects and you can fill in information about publications. Looking to persons, you will be led to other activities of the persons than research.
Research report on-line allows you to feed the database with data of publications. For this purpose you can call up a screen mask. First you have to decide whether you want to give in data of a monograph or of a periodical. By doing this the system offers you different masks where you can give input according to bibliographic standards. Next steps to evolve this system are the following:
If publication is resulting of a project, you can set up a link to this project. So publication can be found by looking at the project. If publication is a "product" of several projects and other activities, you don't need to make a link.
If the visitor of the database is interested in finding and reading the publication there are several ways. If it is available in the library of our university, you will find a link to OPAC (on-line public access catalogue), the electronic librarian system.
http://opac.bibliothek.uni-kassel.de/
This access runs as test at present. It allows to go to a search-form in WWW, where you can find the signature of the publication and the location in the library.
More and more you find publications on servers in Internet. You can compare the status of this with the so called grey literature. One example is Picarta
http://www.uni-kassel.de/bib/online/picarta/
With Picarta it is possible to publish electronic documents free of charge. A union of libraries of several German states has build up a database of "on-line resources". A central catalogue lists the on-line-documents, which lie on distributed servers of participating libraries. The following output-formats will be supported:
So you can set up links to publications on WWW servers.
But publication in Internet will become "serious" too. Publishing houses as Kassel University Press http://www.upress.de
guarantee, that publications can be found for certain time at a definite place, as it is usual with printed literature. So you can set up a link to these addresses too. If visitors are interested in buying a copy, it will be printed by demand. This procedure is very interesting especially for publication of doctoral theses. It is at this time not much cheaper, but advertising by announcing publications to search engines in WWW all over the world gives a greater chance of dissemination of information.
Using research report on-line as entrance, there will be built up an electronic bibliography, where a list of publications of scientists of University of Kassel can be found. But there can be found not only a list, but the publications themselves as printed or electronic copies. By using the investigation module you can generate an individual list of publications of each scientist too. The scientists themselves can use this system to add continuously publications to evolve their individual bibliography.
It is a great challenge for libraries to give support to such systems. They have to install not only servers. They have to guarantee, that data will not only be stored for a long time, but that they could be read in the future too.
Building up such a system has great advantages for the institution. As told at the begin you will have a good and extensive overview over activities at your university for private enterprises, persons presenting political power and interested persons in public life. But it is a good and quick evaluation tool inside university too. Who is doing (what kind of) research and/or lecturers? What projects are financed by funding institutions? How many papers were published? All these questions can easily be answered. Last but not least you can establish corporate design inside WWW, because you offer a great deal of information in a standardised design.
The developing information system of our university will give you the chance to find the desired data independent of the point, you go into the system. The data of the persons working in the university are the main interface. From that point you will find information of research activities, of publications, of lectures, of continuing education and so on. To develop such a system is not only a technical problem of constructing a perfect database with an intelligent architecture, but above all there are two problems to be solved.
If you store and connect such an amount of data electronically, you can easily develop profiles of persons. Questions as what are they doing (or not doing) not only in the present but in the past too will arise? So you have to clarify, which data should be stored, which are allowed to be stored and which of them are for public use and which are not.
Scientists like to do research and/or to held lectures. They don't like to fill in questionnaires. So we are at the begin of lecture again. The system must be easy to be handled. That is the first thing. But second and more important is another thing. Scientists have to be persuaded that it is an advantage for them, to give input to this system.
Dr. Wolfgang Adamczak
Politics & Internet
2nd International Congress on Electronic Media & Citizenship in Information Society
6th - 8th January 1999 in Espoo
15. Internet, information society and new societal movements
Internet, Sciences, and Democracy
CRIS 98
Current Research Information Systems in Europe: The Way to Innovation
12th - 14th of March 1998 in Luxembourg
The future of CRIS: a "LINK" system
EUPRIO Meeting in Strasbourg 4th - 7th September 1997
"Impact of New Technologies on the Communication of Universities in Europe"
Introduction to the Workshop "Internet as Intranet: From public relations to tools of internal communication"
Dr. Wolfgang Adamczak
University of Kassel
Department of Support of Scientific Research
Mönchebergstr. 19
D - 34109 Kassel
Tel.: +49 561 804 2224
Fax: +49 561 804 7216
e-mail: adamczak@hrz.uni-kassel.de
WWW: http://www.uni-kassel.de/wiss_tr/wissinfo.html