This event serves as the follow-up Spring Meeting for bibliometricians and policy analysts working to develop open infrastructures for bibliographic and research data to support policy and research.

The primary focus of this meeting is to explore opportunities and key steps for creating sustainable and viable infrastructure within a Nordic context. The overarching theme of the Spring Meeting 2025 centers on methodologies for building a Nordic research infrastructure using various open data sources and implementing it effectively across different organizational levels—from bibliometric units at universities to national initiatives and specific research disciplines.

Additionally, we will take this opportunity to establish a steering committee for a Nordic Bibliometric Infrastructure. This committee will contribute expertise, experience, and strategic action to advance a collaborative Nordic effort in this area.

Participation

We have prepared a program featuring invited presentations, but there will also be opportunities for participation in discussions, as well as an open session on the second day where participants can propose presentations. If you are interested in presenting an ongoing project or an idea for a service relevant to the community, please submit a title and a short description (max. 300 words) to the conference organizers by 23rd of March. You are welcome to come as you are or bring a brief presentation, coding material, or any other relevant resources for discussion in a workshop setting. We expect all participants to engage actively in discussions. Depending on the number of attendees, sessions will be conducted either in smaller groups or as a full gathering.

Organisation

The workshop operates under a no cost model. Water and some refreshments will be available at the localities, but we will pay for our own provisions (BYOM - Bring your own meals). On the evening of the 7th of April, we will find somewhere to eat dinner together.

Event Details

• Date: 7-8 April, 2025
• Location: Chalmers University of Technology, Sven Hultins Gata 6, 412 58 Gothenburg
• Venue: SB-L200 (Room #2204)
  
• Time: Commencing with registration at 10:00 on Monday, the 7th of April, and concluding not  later than 16:00 on Tuesday, the 8th of April.

Program Highlights:

1. Introduction Sessions with an international outlook
2. Sessions:
3. Panel Session with Nordic perspectives
4. Local solutions
5. Open Session – A Workspace
6. Final session: setting up the Steering committee and the way ahead

Full programme

MONDAY

10.30 Reception desk opens 

11.00 Session 1: Keynote
The Barcelona declaration 
Ludo Waltman, CWTS, University of Leiden, NL

Followed by:
What does it take in practice: Goals – Actors – Tasks (group work)

12.30 Lunch

13.30 Session 2a: Keynote
Re-thinking scientometrics in a big open data world: Infrastructures, systems and framings
Cameron Neylon, Curtin University, AU

14.30 Session b: International Outlook
OpenAIRE's Open Infrastructure for Research Monitoring and Bibliometrics; Stefania Amodeo, OpenAIRE

15.00 Coffee break

15.30 Session 3: Panel discussion
From Barcelona to Gothenburg: Nordic cooperation on open data for research system analysis
- Denmark: Mogens Sandfær, Research Portal Denmark
- Norway: Jon Holm, Research Council Norway 
- Finland: Joonas Nikkanen, CSC - IT Center for Science
- Sweden: Peter Sjögårde, Karolinska Institutet
- Gustaf Nelhans, Swedish School of Library and Information Science - moderator

17.00 End of day 1

17:30-18:00 Meet-up at Tullen, address in e-mail

TUESDAY

9.00 Session 4: National perspectives: invited presentations
Open bibliometric infrastructures in the Nordic countries
- Open Alex with SUNET; Tobias Jeppsson, KTH, SUHF:s Bibliometrics Working group.
- The open Research Portal Denmark; NORA team
- Towards Open Sources: NIB - National Infrastructure for Bibliometrics; Jens Aasheim, Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (SIKT)

10:30 Coffee break

11.00 Session 5: Open session: local workflows and bold assertions
- Investigating the added value of OpenAlex for the Norwegian publication indicator; Dag Aksnes, NIFU
- Introducing Bifrost: An R-Based Tool for Bibliometric Research Analysis; Kristian Niemi & Nadja Neumann, Karlstad University
- Unveiling research landscapes using open research information: challenges and opportunities; Berta Grimau and Sonia Veiga, SIRIS Academic

12.30 Lunch

13.30 Session 6
The road ahead
- Ideas for further work

Next meeting
- Establishing the Nordic Bibliometric Infrastructure Workshop Steering Committee

15.00 End

Registration

We look forward to your active participation and valuable contributions to make this event successful. Should you have any questions or require additional information, please do not hesitate to reach out to the organisers.

Best regards,
Gustaf Nelhans, Ivar Ternsell Torgersen and Jon Holm, for the Nordic Bibliometric Infrastructure (NBI) planning committee.

 

Conference abstracts

 

Keynotes

Ludo:

The Barcelona Declaration

 

Cameron Neylon:

Re-thinking scientometrics in a big open data world: Infrastructures, systems and framings

There has been a seismic shift in the data and analytic capacities relevant to scientometrics over the past decade with the growth (increasingly the dominance) of open data sources and large scale data platforms. This has brought to the surface differences in the goals, needs and even cultures of the various communities that depend on these infrastructures. The needs and interests of the research discipline of bibliometrics are not necessarily the same as those of the professional users of scientometric data and analysis. Both have significant differences to the influx of interested (meta)-researchers and innovators with different technical and disciplinary backgrounds entering the space as barriers traditionally created by proprietary data sources and expensive technical systems disappear. 

This talk will discuss - from the perspective of one of these new entrants - what is possible with these systems that was difficult or impossible before. Case studies using the infrastructure built within the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative will be covered. It will offer some provocations on how we might collectively want to think differently about the shared problems we have and offer some perspectives on what future infrastructures could look like, including the increasing tensions between a need for sovereign data and capabilities with the benefits of working together to create globally comprehensive and trustworthy data infrastructures.

 

Stefania Amodeo, OpenAIRE

Title: OpenAIRE's Open Infrastructure for Research Monitoring and Bibliometrics

Abstract:

This presentation explores how OpenAIRE's Graph database and suite of services can support open research infrastructures in the Nordic region.

The OpenAIRE Graph is a Scientific Knowledge Graph containing nearly 300 million research products, including over 194 million publications, 75 million datasets, and 660,000 software records. It links these products with their organizations and funding agencies, and includes indicators for their usage and impact.

Through the OpenAIRE Graph, institutions and researchers can conduct comprehensive analyses using both APIs and the MONITOR dashboard to generate bibliometric reports, track open access compliance, and evaluate institutional contributions. Drawing from the successful implementation of the Irish National Open Access Monitor, I will discuss how these tools and infrastructure can be tailored to organizational needs. The presentation will examine practical implementation strategies, with particular attention to metadata quality, stakeholder engagement, and the crucial role of interoperability and shared governance in building a sustainable open research ecosystem.

 

No abstracts for the panel discussion

 

National session

Session 4: National perspectives: invited presentations

Open bibliometric infrastructures in the Nordic countries

- Open Alex with SUNET: Tobias Jeppsson, KTH; SUHF:s Bibliometrics Workgroup

 

- The open Research Portal Denmark: NORA team

 

- Towards Open Sources: NIB - National Infrastructure for Bibliometrics; Jens Aasheim, Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (SIKT)

 

- Investigating the added value of OpenAlex for the Norwegian publication indicator; Dag Aksnes, NIFU

 

Session 5: Open session

Kristian Niemi, Nadja Neumann, Karlstad University

​​Introducing Bifrost: An R-Based Tool for Bibliometric Research Analysis

As part of a postdoctoral research project at Karlstad University, we have developed a bibliometric tool called Bifrost. Written in the R programming language, Bifrost retrieves bibliographic data from DiVA (individual local repositories or nation-wide) and SwePub; analyses and presents the results in interactive web pages. Although it was originally designed to address fields of research—such as subject didactics—that do not neatly fit into established bibliographic categories, Bifrost has demonstrated a much broader potential. For an example of a Bifrost-generated report, see <https://bifrost.kau.se/forskning/amnesdidaktik/rel/religionsdidaktik.html>. We are now considering making Bifrost publicly available. In this presentation, we will introduce the tool, demonstrate the bibliometric reports it produces, and, if there is interest, discuss the underlying code. Additionally, we will explore its broader applications and potential for public release, and invite discussion on its future development.

 

Berta Grimau and Sonia Veiga, SIRIS Academic

Title: Unveiling research landscapes using open research information: challenges and opportunities 

Abstract: Recent studies have shown that OpenAlex, one of the main open databases of scientific publications, has greater coverage than proprietary alternatives both in terms of volume and in terms of diversity. However, it also suffers from some limitations, for example, when it comes to affiliation disambiguation. Our talk will present some of the ways in which we can improve/enrich OpenAlex data through AI. First, we will introduce Affilgood 1 (Duran-Silva et al, 2024), a tool to improve affiliation disambiguation and to enrich its geographical metadata. Second, we will present a semi-automatic methodology to build on-demand classification models based on open data, by leveraging on generative LLMs as well as an open-source tool for collaborative dataset curation. Finally, we will demonstrate how entirely new classifications can be developed and openly shared, an approach that is not possible with closed or proprietary data infrastructures. Furthermore, we will present concrete examples of how collaborative and open innovation approaches are enabling analytical and monitoring capabilities that were previously out of reach. These breakthroughs are driven by access to large-scale open datasets: for example, biomedical analyses using OpenAlex data, which provide extensive coverage across the large biomedical domain. We will also explore how existing OpenAlex resources like the Topics (based on the topic classifications developed by CWTS Leiden 2 ), can be leveraged to create initial mappings of complex, interdisciplinary fields like Climate and Sustainability

 

Session 6 NBI Program committee

 

Organisers:

The event is supported by