Current Research Information System, CRIS is an information system for research organisations, where they collect data on matters such as publications, projects and research activities of the organisation’s researchers. In terms of publication metrics, CRIS systems are usually the key data source when analysing the organisation’s own publication outputs. The key benefits of the Current Research Information Systems:
- Coverage, as the systems include information about the entirety of the publication outputs of the organisation without the most common coverage limitations of databases, for example regarding the publication types and languages.
- Identifying publications belonging to the organisation, which works more reliable in a Current Research Information System than in international databases.
- The subject of analysis can include not only the organisation but also the faculties or even smaller sectors of the organisation.
All universities and some other research organisations in Finland have their own Current Research Information System. The Current Research Information Systems of organisations offer differing opportunities for utilising publication metrics, but the basic data available is very similar. This is mostly due to the fact that the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture’s collection of publication information largely determines which data about individual publications is recorded into the Current Research Information Systems. Thus, the Current Research Information Systems act as the original sources of the publication information of organisations in Finland, which then deliver the information to VIRTA Publication Information Services and from there to the Research.fi service. Universities of applied sciences and some research institutions use a JUSTUS Publication Information Reporting Service maintained by CSC for this purpose.
Further, differences between the organisations are caused by the fact that Finnish research organisations use the Current Research Information Systems of three different commercial suppliers: Pure by Elsevier, Converis by Clarivate and SoleCRIS by the Finnish Solenovo. These have some differences between their characteristics and functionalities, and — from the perspective of publication metrics — especially their interfaces with citation databases and analysis tools differ from each other.