The CRIS of the future OR the future of the CRIS?

The academic libraries play an important role in the registration of and reporting on the Research Information of the institutions. In the Netherlands two major changes in academia will affect the way we register and use Research Information.

The first change is the transition to Open Science (www.openscience.nl). One of the pillars of Open Science is its diversity of research outputs, e.g. open data, research software and preprints. Are our CRIS systems prepared for this diversification? And are they able to link the output to one another?

The second policy development is the change of the recognition and rewards system within the universities and funders. The Dutch Universities (VSNU), academic medical centres (NFU) funders (NWO, ZonMW) and the Royal Academy of Sciences (KNWA) published a position paper in November 2019 “Room for everyone’s talent” (https://www.nwo.nl/en/position-paper-room-everyones-talent). Meanwhile, all universities are working on this transformation. Important changes that are brought forward are 1) assess quality instead of quantity and 2) assess both individual specialisms and team performance.

To continue the work of academic libraries on Research Information and support our institutions with the right information and services, the UKB Coordination point Research Impact and Dutch Pure User Group started a project to find out which role the CRIS will or can play in this changing academic world. The key question is “Which role can or must the CRIS have in an academic world without counting, and with a huge diversity of research outputs.” In this study we seek collaboration with the Dutch Recognition and Rewards program as well as the local programs at the universities.

In this talk we will present the early findings of this project, such as:

• How can the CRIS support a narrative CV for evaluation purposes?
• What do we need to support the diversity of research output?
• How can academic libraries maintain a future proof CRIS and related services?