CRIStin

CRIStin (Current Research Information System in Norway) is the national research information system of Norway, and is owned by the Royal Ministry of Education and Research. CRIStin documents all scholarly publications by Norwegian researchers, and complements the BIBSYS database, which focuses on storage and retrieval of data pertaining to research, teaching and learning – historically metadata related to library resources. CRIStin is the first database of its kind worldwide.^[1]

The CRIStin system includes the Norwegian Scientific Index, a comprehensive government-owned bibliographic database aimed at covering and rating all serious academic publication channels worldwide, including academic journals and publishers. Publication channels may be nominated by Norwegian academics, and the database does not accept self-nominations by publishers. The index includes journal-level ratings and book publisher-level ratings. Publishers and journals may be assigned the rating 1 (standard rating for publication channels that meet basic academic quality criteria), 2 (rating for internationally leading publication channels), 0 (non-academic) or X (possibly predatory publication channels).

The database was started at the University of Oslo, but later became a national system operated on behalf of the government. As the first and largest database of its kind, the Norwegian Scientific Index is also used in other countries than Norway, e.g. in Sweden and South Africa, and it is the model of similar indices in other countries, including Denmark. It also serves as the basis for a joint Nordic bibliographic database that is being developed under the auspices of the Nordic governments and the Nordic Council. Additionally, the European database ERIH PLUS is now a sister project of the Norwegian Scientific Index, after it was transferred from the European Science Foundation to the Norwegian Centre for Research Data in 2014.