Publication data integration as a tool for excellence-based research analysis at the University of Latvia

Abstract

The evaluation of research results can be carried out with different purposes aligned with strategic goals of an institution, for example, to decide upon distribution of research funding or to recruit or promote employees of an institution involved in research. Whereas quantitative measures such as number of scientific papers or number of scientific staff are commonly used for such evaluation, the strategy of the institution can be set to achieve ambitious scientific goals. Therefore, a question arises as to how more quality oriented aspects of the research outcomes should be measured. To supply an appropriate dataset for evaluation of both types of metrics, a suitable framework should be provided, that ensures that neither incomplete, nor faulty data are used, that metric computation formulas are valid and the computed metrics are interpreted correctly. To provide such a framework with the best possible features, data from various available sources should be integrated to achieve an overall view on the scientific activity of an institution along with solving data quality issues. The paper presents a publication data integration system for excellence-based research analysis at the University of Latvia. The system integrates data available at the existing information systems at the university with data obtained from external sources. The paper discusses data integration flows and data integration problems including data quality issues. A data model of the integrated dataset is also presented. Based on this data model and integrated data, examples of quality oriented metrics and analysis results of them are provided.