Glossary

Preprint

A preprint is a scientific publication that has not yet been peer-reviewed. It is usually published on platforms such as arXiv or bioRxiv in order to make results available at an early stage.

Preprints can be entered as a separate entity in OSIRIS. However, the preprint is not subsequently converted into a publication. The publication resulting from a preprint has different metadata after publication; the content and title can also differ after the review process, as can the list of authors and, of course, other bibliographic details such as the place and time of publication. Usually, both simply remain in the system, but are counted differently.

It would be nice to link the two activities, but this is not possible at the moment.

Online ahead of print

An article that has already been published online but has not yet appeared in a printed edition of a journal. To mark an article as online ahead of print in OSIRIS, simply tick the corresponding box.

If you add activities via the DOI, OSIRIS often recognises this by the fact that the volume and number of pages are missing. In this case, the date of the online publication is of course used as the date first. The publication is then flagged "Online ahead on print" and users are notified once a quarter that the publication still has this status. As soon as this changes and the publication appears in print, the metadata can be updated and the date set to the official publication date. This can also be done automatically via the DOI by pressing the synchronise button in the field with the DOI. All other data such as issue and volume are then also added.

Peer Review

A review process in which a manuscript is reviewed often anonymously by other researchers before it is published. OSIRIS can record whether an article has been peer-reviewed. This is done either by different types or by using the data field 'peer-reviewed'.

Third-party funded project

A project that is externally funded, e.g. by the DFG, BMFTR or EU. In OSIRIS, such projects are typically recorded with a project number, duration and funding institution. As of version 1.5.0, they can be entered as an application, which separates the funding and application from the research content of the project.

DOI (Digital Object Identifier)

A permanent, unique identifier for digital publications. DOIs are very important for OSIRIS as they prevent the creation of duplicates and allow activities to be loaded into OSIRIS semi-automatically.

Open Access

Refers to publications that are free to access. In OSIRIS, you can either enter and display Open Access as a Boolean field (yes or no) or the Open Access status. You can find analyses in the All activities → Statistics section and under Visualisation → OpenAccess.

Impact Factor

A measure of the relevance or visibility of a journal, based on the average citation frequency. OSIRIS optionally displays impact factors for the evaluation of publication performance. You can read more about the impact factor here.

ORCID

A unique researcher identifier to correctly assign publications and persons. In OSIRIS you can add a person's ORCID. An interface is currently being planned.

Persistent Identifier (PID)

A persistent identifier for persons, organisations, projects, etc. In OSIRIS, for example, DOIs (publications), ORCIDs (persons) or RORs (organisations) are used.

CRIS (Current Research Information System)

A system for the administration and documentation of research information - just like OSIRIS itself. The aim is the structured recording and evaluation of research achievements.

Self-entry (self-reporting)

Means that researchers enter their activities independently, without centralised editing. This is a basic principle of OSIRIS in order to spread the workload across many shoulders.

Author order and role

In many scientific disciplines, the order of authors is important (e.g. first author, last author). OSIRIS supports a flexible display and analysis of the order. Multiple first and last authors are also supported. These are specially labelled in the print output. Corresponding authors - i.e. authors to whom correspondence is to be sent - are only supported if they are not a middle author, as only one role can be assigned to each contributor. It should be noted that multiple first or last authorships are sometimes recognised during DOI import, but corresponding authorships are not.

Institutional affiliation

A person can be assigned to several organisational units. This is supported in OSIRIS - e.g. for flexible reports when changing institutions. OSIRIS also records the period of affiliation and offers the option of ignoring an organisational unit for the scientific output.