An Information System about Research Units GRAAL, An Information System about Research Units Jean-François Desnos, Geneviève Gras, Béatrice Meier, Laurent Pilet Université Joseph Fourier, Université de Strasbourg, Clermont Université

The aims of GRAAL GRAAL is an application system designed to manage the french universities research labs A reference for the administration of research A tool for the laboratories (means, activities) A communication vector with the government and national bodies A datamart providing indicators to the president

The project The GRAAL project is a cooperation which started in 2004 between the Universities of Grenoble, Clermont-Ferrand, Strasbourg, Lille USTL, Nancy Henri Poincaré, Paris Descartes. It’s presently distributed by AMUE and used by 44 universities in France.

The project organization Steering Committee: in charge of the strategy ; the presidents and directors of national bodies Project committee: executes the strategic plan, allows the means, follows the planning of the project Functional and operational teams: design and run the application.

Functionalities of the application Describes the structure of research : labs, clusters, teams,… Information on people and their scientific activities, including international Follow-up of the financial means One database for one or several universities The following example shows the complexity of the structures

Structure of research (example) Université Joseph Fourier (university) INP Grenoble (university) CNRS (national research body) INRIA (national research body) Physics & Maths Dept IT Department Federation IMAG Laboratory GRAVIR GRAphics, VIsion and Robotics 7 others laboratoires IT doctoral school Team Motion and Animation Engineering doctoral school Team Virtual Reality Team Computer Vision

Integration in the university IS Students Reference Data Bases Human Resources Web services GRAAL University Data warehouse User Connection Authentification Portal of University (E-sup portail) CAS LDAP directory

One database for several universities Human Resources Students Data warehouse GRAAL University … Human Resources Students Data warehouse ENT (E-sup) University B Web services CAS ldap directory Students Human Resources Data warehouse University A

Indicators General information : type of research unit, associate universities, scientific labels, address, … Personal : Researchers, Professors, Visiting scholars, PhD students, PostDoc, staff Finance : Needs, Means / team Scientific production : articles, events, contracts, patents, associated private companies

Exchanges with the directory of research on institutional website or laboratory’s website (by Web services) With the ministry : XML files tranfers for SIREDO statistics With national open archiv systems HAL (by Web services)

Technology Full web: Java Oracle 9i et 10g databases Development : WebObjects Framework , Eclipse IDE (WOLips plugins) Deployment : WebObjects / Tomcat Oracle 9i et 10g databases Integrated in the university IS In the digital work environment (fr. ENT) CAS, LDAP directory authentication Synchronous access to reference databases : Student system, HR

Exchanges between GRAAL and open archive system HAL Publications by laboratory harvesting read read validation Publications by laboratory and author submit write write

Perspectives for new versions Structures: adapt to new research structures In France, a number of universities are merging in PRES (“Pôle de Recherche et d’Enseignement Supérieur”) “Teams”, subdivisions of a laboratory, are getting attributes of a laboratory. Exchanges With open archives projects (by Web services) With a national research skills database (by XML files transfers) Upgrade of the reporting capacities (with Business Objects) Technology: rewrite the software? Cooperate with CNRS? Access other Databases? (than Oracle)