Abstract
Research information management systems (RIMS) are the emerging new service in academic and research libraries. RIMS support universities and libraries in managing their institute, faculty, and researcher information through a single interface. They also allow the researcher to deposit and share their research with the public and enable the reuse of that research. An implementation of RIMS in universities or libraries ensures the proper management of research information for future use. RIMS disseminates research information and publications and supports data, academic, and administrative work by faculty and researchers. Traditionally, an institutional repository, digital library, and research data management software were used to manage research information as part of an institutional repository, but these applications have failed to manage more specialist researcher information and more detailed faculty profiles, etc. Consequently, various specialist software companies have brought RIMS onto the market with applications and products that meet the requirements of individual researchers, libraries, and universities in the management of research information. This chapter provides a comparative evaluation of RIMS (i.e., PURE-Elsevier, Converis-Thomson Routers, and Symplectic Elements). This study contributes towards an understanding of RIMS and assists with the selection of the appropriate software application for implementation of a RIMS system in universities and libraries.
TopLiterature Review
A review of the literature points to several previous studies on the comparative evaluation of research data management (RDM) platforms and research publication and data repositories. For example, there are a number of case studies on the comparison, critical evaluation, features, advantages and disadvantages of using various research data repositories to store, archive and share research data with other researchers. Most of these studies focus on the comparison and critical analysis of open source data repositories and software such as DataVerse, CKAN, Digital commons, Dspace, ePrints, EUDAT, Fedora, Figshare, Greenstone, Invenio, Omeka, SciFLOW and Zenodo.
Clements, A., and McCutcheon, V. (2014), carried out case studies on the implementation of a RIMS at two universities in the UK. The University of St Andrews and University of Glasgow worked over several years to implement and develop their RIMS using the Pure CERIF-CRIS and EPrints software. The authors explain the strategies and systems they used and the issues that arose during the implementation process. Austin, C. et al., (2015) surveyed 32 online research data and data sharing platforms to provide a broad overview of the current features of data repositories and data sharing platforms. The authors studied selected research data platforms comparing data criteria and functionality such as cloud services, free to access, download data, and deposit data, publishing charges, the size of the repository, integration with ORCID ID, Scopus ID etc.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Bibliography: A list of books, scholarly articles, speeches, private records, diaries, interviews, laws, letters, websites, and other sources that are used when researching and writing a paper.
Preservation: Action taken to prevent damage occurring, for example by packing and storing documents in a suitable environment.
SaaS: Software as a service. A software distribution model in which a third-party provider hosts applications and makes them available to customers over the internet.
ORCID: A persistent digital identifier that identifies and distinguishes individual researchers thereby resolving author ambiguity.
API: An application program interface (API) is a code that allows two software programs to communicate with each other.
Citations: A reference to the source of information used in research work.
Harvesting: A process where a small script, also known as a malicious bot, is used to automatically extract a large amount of data from websites and use it for other purposes.
Author Name Ambiguity: The author name can't be used to reliably identify all scholarly authors, thus making it impossible to unanimously associate all scholarly works with their authors.
Collaboration: In academic research, collaboration is usually taken to mean an equal partnership between two academic faculty members who are pursuing mutually beneficial research.
Altmetric: Altmetrics are metrics and qualitative data that that complement traditional, citation-based metrics.
Metadata: A set of data that describes and gives information about other data.
Authentication: The process of determining whether someone or something, is who or what it declares itself to be.
Interoperability: Refers to the essential ability of computerized systems to connect and readily communicate with each other, even if different manufacturers developed them in various industries.