Current Research Funding Information System (CRFIS): Linking Information Systems to Improve Scientific Knowledge Production

Abstract

In 1996 a group of German research consultants declared their need to develop a common research funding information system. With the help of DFN e.V. and the German Ministry for Research a software development was initiated. Two years later GMD and Ruhr University Bochum published the first version of an Electronic Research Funding Information System (ELFI), a very modern java-based internet-program. After two phases of evaluation, the research funding consultants tested the software and defined further criteria leading step by step to an amelioration.

Nowadays ELFI provides information for more than 120 customer institutions throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland with more than 12,000 individual user accounts.

ELFI collects information about research funding from the World Wide Web with the help of software-robots. Relevant web sites are observed regularly for news and changes among research funding programs and their calls. As a result these changes can be discovered easily and communicated to the ELFI user subsequently.

The ELFI data model corresponds to some parts of the CERIF data model. We want to show how we connect to some entities and attributes of CERIF, so ELFI funding information could be used with any CRIS.