Jan Dvořák

CONNECTING CLOSED WORLD RESEARCH INFORMATION SYSTEMS THROUGH THE LINKED OPEN DATA WEB

Research Information Systems (RIS) play a critical role in the sharing of scientific information and provide researchers, professionals and decision makers with the required data for their activities. Existing RIS standards have proposed data models to represent the main entities for storage and exchange. These account for the needs of multiple stakeholders through a high flexibility based on a formal syntax and declared semantics, but for techno-historical reasons they assume the completeness of information within system boundaries. The distributed nature of research information across systems calls for a mechanism to link the local entities from the closed world of concrete RISs with other possibly underspecified entities exposed through other means, as for example, the Linked Open Data Web. By transformation of a relational model into an open graph model, differences between the two system paradigms are revealed. The main principles and techniques for exposing CERIF-driven relational data as linked data will be provided as a first step demonstrating effective RISs interconnection through the linked open data (LOD) Web.

OpenAIRE Guidelines for CRIS Managers: Supporting Interoperability of Open Research Information through Established Standards☆

OpenAIRE is the European infrastructure enabling researchers to comply with the European Union requirements for Open Access to research results. OpenAIRE collects metadata from data sources across Europe and beyond and defines interoperability guidelines to assist providers in exposing their information in a way that is compatible with OpenAIRE. This contribution focuses on a specific type of data source, CRIS systems, and the respective OpenAIRE guidelines, based on CERIF XML. A range of issues, spanning different aspects of information representation and exchange, needed to be addressed by the guidelines in order to define a complete solution for interoperability.

A possible coincidence of cytomegalovirus retinitis and intraocular lymphoma in a patient with systemic non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma

PurposeTo present a possible coincidence of cytomegalovirus retinitis and intraocular lymphoma in a patient with systemic non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.Case presentationA 47-year-old woman presented with decreased visual acuity associated with white retinal lesions in both eyes. A history of pneumonia of unknown aetiology closely preceded the deterioration of vision. Five years previously the patient was diagnosed with follicular non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was treated with a chemotherapy regimen comprised of cyclophosphamide, adriamycin, vincristin, and prednisone with later addition of the anti-CD20 antibody rituximab. She experienced a relapse 19 months later with involvement of the retroperitoneal lymph nodes, and commenced treatment with rituximab and 90Y-ibritumomab tiuxetan. A second relapse occurred 22 months after radioimmunotherapy and was treated with a combination of fludarabine, cyclophosphamide, and mitoxantrone followed by rituximab. The patient experienced no further relapses until the current presentation (April, 2010).Pars plana vitrectomy with vitreous fluid analysis was performed in the right eye. PCR testing confirmed the presence of cytomegalovirus in the vitreous. Atypical lymphoid elements, highly suspicious of malignancy were also found on cytologic examination. Intravenous foscarnet was administered continually for three weeks, followed by oral valganciclovir given in a dose of 900 mg twice per day. In addition, the rituximab therapy continued at three monthly intervals. Nevertheless, cessation of foscarnet therapy was followed by a recurrence of retinitis on three separate occasions during a 3-month period instigating its reinduction to the treatment regime after each recurrence.ConclusionsCytomegalovirus retinitis is an opportunistic infection found in AIDS patients as well as in bone marrow and solid organ transplant recipients being treated with systemic immunosuppressive drugs. This case presents a less common incidence of cytomegalovirus retinitis occurring in a patient with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. We demonstrated a possible coexistence of cytomegalovirus retinitis and intraocular lymphoma in this particular patient. The final diagnosis was based on clinical manifestations together with the course of uveitis and its response to treatment alongside the results of vitreous fluid analysis. This report highlights the importance of intraocular fluid examination in cases with nonspecific clinical manifestations. Such an examination allows for the detection of simultaneously ongoing ocular diseases of differing aetiologies and enables the prompt initiation of effective treatment.

Publication metadata in CERIF: Inspiration by FRBR

The Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and its Scholarly Works Application Profile (SWAP) are used to inspire the representation of complex real world situations in the publication part of the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF), the model for Current Research Information Systems (CRIS). CERIF is found to have room for different approaches to representing metadata of scholarly publications, which could hamper the interoperability of CRIS. To lessen that risk, we propose guidelines for representing scholarly publication metadata in CERIF; our design goal is to enhance the utility of CRIS in supporting the functions of scientific communication. The guidelines are formulated using the notions of Scholarly Work, Expression and Manifestation from FRBR/SWAP.

A Comparison of Research Output Counting Methods Using a National CRIS – Effects at the Institutional Level

Delivered at the CRIS2014 Conference in Rome; published in Procedia Computer Science 33 (Jul 2014).-- 6 pages.

Theory of excitation energy transfer in the primary processes of photosynthesis. III. Mono-exponential regime

Abstract Analytical expressions for the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the rate constants matrix describing the excitation energy transfer for a cyclic geometry of the photosynthetic unit are obtained. For a general geometry of the photosynthetic unit, the perturbation theory is used. Solutions of the Pauli Master Equation for both cases are found and discussed in detail. It is shown that for sufficiently long times these solutions as well as corresponding fluorescence intensity and other related experimental quantities behave mono-exponentially.

Progress in the Implementation of the OpenAIRE Guidelines for CRIS Managers

This contribution provides an update on the implementation of the OpenAIRE Guidelines for CRIS Managers based on CERIF-XML, which aim to allow Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) to be harvested by the OpenAIRE content aggregator. Besides describing the technical challenges posed by this step forward in system interoperability, the text provides an insight on the CRIS landscape and how different systems could gradually become OpenAIRE-compliant. The contribution is a follow-up to previous presentations on the progress with the drafting of these guidelines that were delivered at past CRIS conferences.