Using data from research information management systems in bibliometrics: Room N109 - Panel 053. Data analytics in science – what is at stake?

Research information management systems (i.e. Symplectic) have facilitated institutions, librarians, andresearchers to keep in one place all the records of institutional research performance. Among the multiple benefitsof these centralised data sources are the ability to collect and deposit a variety of types of data not only aboutpublications (i.e. accepted journal articles, conference papers, preprints, etc.) but also about grants, professionalactivities, etc. everything is integrated for a better informed decision-making. Researchers can enter manuallytheir bibliographic metadata and details for all research outputs into these systems; deposit a full text copy andlink the output to any associated funding keeping the productivity united. Otherwise, researchers can harvestsymplectic automatically through ORCID. By default Symplectic claims any records including in ORCID. ORCIDcan help with the challenges of disambiguation of names. Researchers can manage this, or revoke permission,at any time. The publications will add to university repositories to help research visibility after verification by librarystaff. This has led organisations can easily access to these systems and perform analysis with the data depositedthere. For research evaluation purposes, this is extremely beneficial as we could consider a variety of outputsincluding but not limited to, research articles, reviews, monographs, data, reagents, software, complying withDORA principles however do researchers have concerns of their data being used? Would this have to do withthe preferences of researchers? And also how sure are we that the stored data is accurate? The difficulty inassociating publication with correct authors is well known in Bibliometrics and it introduces inaccuracy in indicatorsin the attribution of scientific discoveries and author credit, and discovery. The main hypothesis is thesepreferences and reluctances could differ among disciplines, researcher stages, gender, geographicalbackgrounds, etc. We must be transparent in the evaluation process and involve researchers.