By integrating academic databases and applying artificial intelligence (AI), the task of registering scientific output and making the results available to relevant users can be eased significantly. A Brazilian collaboration has reduced time spent for the purpose by up to 80%.
The effort is a part of the program for governmental collaboration on informatics (GoPG). The new tool is developed by the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) with technical assistance from RNP, the national research and education network (NREN) of the country.
CAPES operates an online platform named Sucupira. In the new effort, Sucupira is integrated with Lattes, the official national register of academic titles. Further, the platform is integrated with the global system OpenAlex (the name inspired by the famous Library of Alexandria) which contains more than 300 million academic works with references to authors, institutions etc. for each.
Automated collection of data
Key to the improved efficiency is DAVi, an AI tool developed with assistance from RNP. The tool acts as a virtual assistant, which can analyze texts to extract the acquired data. Using the unique author identification system ORCID, the tool will prepare automated inclusion in the overall data collection system.
Following the initial author identification, the publication will be made available at the registers covered by the platform and validated against the publication record of the scientist in question. Further, the work will automatically be added to the validated publications of the relevant post-graduate program.
The new effort is the latest step in a series of improvements to the Sucupira platform. The platform has become integrated with the CAPES portal of scientific journals, enabling exchange of information between platforms, while the use of AI and persistent identification aids the validation of publication authorships, and augments the credibility of the information. As a result, integration of the various systems is improved, promoting a higher degree of data usage.
100 institutions take part
Considering the many benefits, the partners expect to see interest from Brazilian institutions for training relevant staff in using the new system. Therefore, a training course has been created by RNP.
Also, the program for governmental collaboration on informatics has imported approximately 5,000 theses and dissertations from institutional repositories. In the following phase, these efforts will be expanded to the repositories of all the approximately 100 institutions of higher education which participate in the initiative.
With the continuous evolution of the functionalities, the burden of information management at Brazil’s academic institutions is expected to be eased further, while the quality of data will also be improved significantly, offering a simpler experience and integration for the entire academic community.
The text is inspired by the article “Nova integração da Plataforma Sucupira reduz em até 80% o tempo de registro da produção científica” (in Portuguese) on the RNP website.
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