The European Research Council

ERIS

A Research Information System

to support Monitoring and

Evaluation of ERC funding

activities

European Research Council

Established by the

European Commission

Outline of the presentation

Evolving Concept of accountability in research funding

agencies

─ Changing expectations by ‘Principles’

─ Monitoring and Evaluation of ERC funding activities

Research Information System of the ERC

─ Key features

─ Status

─ Future Plans

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European Research Council

Established by the

European Commission

Increasing pressure to account for public

funds

Accountability in Principal/Agent Model ─ Principal : right to monitor (ensure that agent acts in the interest of

Principal)

─ Agent : obligation to account for resources

Evolving “accountability” ─ Core question : “what have we done with the money”

─ Traditionally :

─ “Which projects do you fund?”

─ Currently : increased expectations

─ “which results have you achieved?”

─ “what is their significance- for science, economy, society” ?

─ Changing question

─ not if R&D investments produce benefits

─ but how are your investments produce benefits (or contribute to

producing benefits) │ 3

European Research Council

Established by the

European Commission

Schematic representation of the

“accountability dimensions”

Role of the Research information System

─ It takes time for results to be produced and years for the impact to unfold.

Only carefully designed studies can help uncover the impact

─ A single research information system alone cannot do tell which impact a

funding organisation has, but it can provide a basis for those analysis.

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European Research Council

Established by the

European Commission

ERC Approach – I

│ 5

Direct impacts

Accountability

& Information

Science

Management Management

Efficiency

Advancing

knowledge &

dissemination

Impact on

researchers

Impact on

research

organisations

Emerging

research

areas

Impact on

research

policies and

funding

structures

Derived impacts

Structural impacts

Training

Economic

benefits

Societal

benefits

Performance

Attract best researchers

and industrial research

investment

Reinforce excellence,

dynamism and creativity

Stable, effective

administration

Better exploit research

assets and foster

innovation towards a

dynamic knowledge

based society

Dimensions

Components

Objectives

European Research Council

Established by the

European Commission

Development

Careful survey of existing

infrastructures

DG RTD Systems

ESF work , euroCRIS activities

US agencies

Mixture of external and internal

development work

─ An off-the-shelf system does not exist

(despite what some systems claim)

─ Any system has to be modular (changing

data sources, changing expectations

and conditions)

─ External Development : public

procurement (AVEDAS)

─ Internal development : complementary

services and processes

Development in phases │ 6

European Research Council

Established by the

European Commission

Key features of the ERC Research

Information System

Collect, manage and support analysis of projects and related results

─ Project outputs : publications, patents, other outputs

─ Important discoveries / breakthroughs

─ identify and describe notable research advances (experts

highlights, citations metrics …)

─ Project News such as Prize and Awards, other information

─ Manage further information (such as Portfolio classification (project

and outputs level; Open access, journals etc … )

Make use of “big data”

Take advantage of the increasing amount of data available online

Modular architecture

─ Easy to adapt if data sources changes (add new data sources,

changes in existing ones)

─ Can be expanded to suits other needs

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European Research Council

Established by the

European Commission

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Building blocks : data model

European Research Council

Established by the

European Commission

Building blocks : back office

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Manage users

changes the layout elements of

the user interface

manage information entities

(in single steps or in bulk)

Add/import new records

Delete records

Change status (validate)

Produce reports

Export data

Administrator interface

European Research Council

Established by the

European Commission

│ 10

End user interface – test modus

European Research Council

Established by the

European Commission

Integrating new analytical modules

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i-ERIS : interface for internal use

Support the activities of Policy Officers to prepare

Briefings… Information note

Gradually replace the time-consuming preparation of

presentations

Basis for other 'in-depth' analysis on funding impact and

funding policy

Modular System

─ Internal development

─ Can integrate routines/ scripts in different

programming languages

CLI facility and output of text files

European Research Council

Established by the

European Commission

RoadMap – I

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March 2013 : Deployment of the system

Functionalities:

- automatically collecting data from WoS, Scopus and

Pubmed

- Deduplication

- Browsing Projects Results

- Basic Reporting

July 2013 : deployment of beta version of

analytical tools (for internal use)

Primary Usage

Support the activities of Policy Officers to prepare Briefings…

Information note

Gradually replace the time-consuming preparation of

presentations & Basis for other 'in-depth' analysis on funding

impact and funding policy

European Research Council

Established by the

European Commission

Roadmap – II

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Data Base

User Interface 1

Publications:

journal articles 2 Patents 3

Other

Information

(Highlights,

Notes &News…)

4

Other

publications 5

Related

projects 6

Benchmark

Data 7

Link to

other RIS 8