Building the Unicorn: Or How to Balance Magic and Practicality in Research Information Systems

Discovering and aggregating distributed information about research performed on an academic campus is not an easy challenge to tackle. Given the heterogeneous research conducted at an institution, many existing commercial platforms and data sources are incomplete or do not meet specific institutional needs. Enter the Unicorn or, in other words, something that is desirable but difficult to find or obtain. In 2018, Pennsylvania State University Libraries was tasked with leveraging commercial and open sources to discover and aggregate research metadata into a common platform and application programming interface that would meet multiple use cases across campus, including faculty profiles, research impact and assessment, and open access policy compliance. This session will include a presentation on the technology and data sources used to power the Unicorn along with how it met evolving institutional needs for discovering and assessing research, while meeting federal and institutional compliance requirements for public access.

https://metadata.libraries.psu.edu/