National Management System for Science and Technology Information (ISNet): A Vision

  Knowledge Management in the domain of health

  Mission :

  To establish a common gateway portal, aiming at establishing a foundation for innovation and knowledge management system.

  Main Objectives:

• To reform Iran's status in science and technology
• Speed up management decision making with the help of the different reports retrieved from ISNet
• Identify priorities for research and technology
• Formulate policies for research activities leading them in the direction of the pre-defined priorities
• Program planning to determine the institutions research budgets
• Dynamic assessment and evaluation of research centers
• and in addition, acceleration in the:
  • Management of knowledge assets
  • Designing of the country's comprehensive scientific roadmap
  • Promotion in the quality of research activities
  • Foresighting researches in the domain of health

  Secondary Objectives:

• Create a comprehensive scientific database for the country in an automatic and continuous manner
• Augment the speed of accessibility to scientific data and researches within the country for the stakeholders
• Lead and direct researchers in obtaining the needed data
• Strengthen collaboration among researchers in the different scientific research centers
• Prevent in the performance of identical researches among the different research centers
• Prevent the likelihood of plagiarism such as, presentation of research and articles to different research centers
• Educate and encourage providers of scientific contents to strictly observe the standards of exchanging and publication of data
• Feasibility of using the available statistics and perform researches from the compiled databases

  Unique Features:

• Standardization of research management systems for input and output processes
• Creation of a coding system
• Creation of a registry system
• Comprehensively contains all research products (articles, research plans, thesis and dissertations, translations and compilations, books and etc.)
• Support author's copyrights
• Organize all produced and published scientific information in all universities throughout the country
• Create conformity among the different platforms and local databases (presently, local databases are all in conformity to certain standards but are in manual process but ISNet provides complete support for its complete change to an electronic process
• Support the evaluation system
• Metadata management and provide intersectoral and multidisciplinary reports

Stakeholders Community Students Researchers Research Centers Colleges and Universities Organizations affiliated to the Ministry of Health Ministries

  Methodology:

  In the implementation of this project, several steps have been undertaken. In the initial phase, we have to refine the ISNet in such a way that it will conform to our cultural standards then, the National ISNet was introduced to all university chancellors and a workshop was organized for all university website managers. The first phase of the implementation process were undertaken in the following stages; determination of appropriate standards ,amendments in the input and output processes, provision of the necessary instruments and infrastructures, security and permission access, expansion of networking information and in the use of the networking, designing the webpage and an access to help, creation of a registry and a coding system and the provision of a pattern and instructions on how to transform each universities output into an XML format. The second phase of the implementation process was the initiation of the local ISNet in 6 universities as a Pilot which has expanded into 17 universities and at present all 40 universities have their own ISNet.

  The information contained in the National ISNet was developed 3 phases and they are:

  Phase I:

• Theses
• Journals
• C.V. of faculty members
• Research plans
• ISNet software

  Phase II:

• Conferences (on line announcements and registrations)
• Committees
• Libraries
• Compilation/ Translation of Books
• MeSH

  Phase III:

• Workshops
• Articles published in international journals
• Research Budgets
• Networking
• Collaboration
• Patent
• Awards

  The third phase of the implementation process which is at the present time being undertaken is the inspection of all local ISNets and the evaluation of their performances.

  Summary:

  In the direction towards systematization and an accurate and efficient management of produced researches in the domain of health, the National Management System for Science and Technology Information (ISNet) designated as a common portal for scientific data and produced researches, has been created. This information networking will serve as a tool and a place for integrating information from different areas; individual, organizational, institutional and the country's scientific publications. Actually this networking acts as the central and a first hand source for creating connections between the local ISNets and is the only hyperlink that receives and stores metadata from the different universities or the local ISNets and serves as a tool to disseminate metadata to other organizations, but, does not produce any information. Original metadata are contained within the universities meaning that each university has their own original metadata plus the metadata of the rest of the universities throughout the country. Using this approach, activities without value added, research duplications, accumulation of unnecessary information, ineffective transfer and exchange of information will be lessened and with the application of the national and the localized international standards, will bring about a more dynamic interchange of information.