The PTCRIS program, implemented by the Unit FCCN, aims to facilitate the production, access, sharing and management of information on national scientific activity. It is responsible for developing a regulatory framework and infrastructures with a view to creating an integrated science information ecosystem in Portugal. Find out more here.
An open scientific and technological ecosystem, with advantages for all those involved. This is the vision of the PTCRIS structuring program, implemented in Portugal by the Foundation for Science and Technology, through its Unit FCCN. The construction of this system is guided by three fundamental objectives: to reduce the bureaucratic burden on researchers by simplifying the management of information on scientific activity; to allow research activity to be measured more accurately on the basis of complete, reliable and up-to-date data; and to facilitateaccess to this same research activity.
The potential of the PTCRIS ecosystem impacts all actors of the scientific and technological universe in Portugal. By promoting interoperability between science management systems, the PTCRIS aims to break the existing information silos, benefiting not only the leaders of higher education and research institutions, but also other agents such as educators, scientific publishers, libraries, technology companies and the media. For all these actors, it will now be easier to manage information supporting science and to access open data on scientific activity
"This ecosystem will promote the excellence of science in Portugal", can be read on the programme's website. According to João Mendes Moreira, the Director of PTCris, this program aims to define the normative framework of the internal and external information systems of FCT and aims to arouse proximity between all agents of the universe of technology and science, facilitating their interaction.
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To meet its objectives and fulfil its vision, the PTCRIS hastwo fundamentallines of action : a) development of a normative framework for interoperability and infrastructures and services focused on the basic entities of the scientific system (researchers, institutions, funding, scientific production); and b) promotion of the adoption of this normative framework and infrastructures by the different services operating in the universe of science and technology.
One of these services is CIÊNCIAVITAE, the national platform for scientific curricula management. CIÊNCIAVITAEappears as the first service entirely based on the PTCRIS standards and infrastructures and proposes to occupy a central space in the national science and technology ecosystem working as a tool to perform any administrative act based on a CV. CIÊNCIAVITAE has, to date, 67,616 registered researchers and over 1 million referenced scientific articles.
In recent years, several entities have adapted their systems to the regulatory framework and infrastructures becoming part of the PTCRIS ecosystem. These include the new FCT funding management platform, MyFCT in which authentication occurs via CIÊNCIA ID and the submission of curricular information is based exclusively on CIÊNCIAVITAEthus dispensing the re-entry of personal and curricular data in the context of application for FCT funding.
Besides FCT, the National Innovation Agency also integrated this year the PTCRIS ecosystem with the development of the Innovation Portal. This portal is based on the PTCRIS infrastructures for the management of national science and technology organisations and on CIÊNCIAVITAEto aggregate and make available authoritative information about the people operating in the national innovation system.
On the institutional side, we highlight the development of an integration framework that allows the transfer of information between the science management systems of the institutions in accordance with the PTCRIS regulation and CIÊNCIAVITAE. One of the products of this work, carried out in collaboration with ISCTE-IUL, is the integration between CIÊNCIAVITAEand the science management system of this institution allowing its teachers/researchers the automatic transfer of curricular information between the two systems.
Promoting the transparency of scientific activity is another of the strategic objectives of the PTCRIS, with the creation of a portal aggregating all information on scientific activity carried out in Portugal, namely researcher profiles, organisations operating in the science and technology ecosystem, scientific production and associated funding. a
All these features give the PTCRIS an instrumental role in enabling a more efficient, open and transparent science and technology ecosystem. Bringing together the whole community in a single integrated ecosystem, it functions as a digital advisor in the areas of research and science.
Learn more about the PTCris programme on the service's website.
