Commercial bibliometric databases are maintained through a centralised process in which a single commercial entity collates and standardises the heterogeneous metadata of the fragmented publishing landscape and makes it available as a single database. This centralised approach results in inadequate data quality. Incomplete information on national circumstances and a profit-optimised use of resources result in insufficient coverage and representation of the heterogeneous national science systems through this centralised process of data provision. The locally available national expertise on, for example, national institutions, research funders, resident authors or nationally relevant journals is not utilised and results in inadequate data quality.
Given these deficits in centralised databases, national bibliometric infrastructures are maintained in several Eastern Partnership countries and in Germany. In addition to research and reporting activities, these national bibliometric infrastructures apply their expertise on the respective national research system to improve data coverage and data quality. National and regional research results are made visible by indexing them in their own databases, and the data quality on national research results found in commercial databases is substantially improved using the expertise available locally. This decentralised approach thus enables comprehensive and validated analyses of the respective national research system at the various aggregation levels, such as national research institutions or national research funding bodies.
The INNBI project aims to connect national bibliometric infrastructures and build a network among the relevant national scientific stakeholders in the Eastern Partnership countries and Germany. This will facilitate the sharing of data that has been improved with national expertise. To this end, the project will initially lay the foundations in the form of exploratory and networking measures.
