The First NRW State Research Report: Role, Challenges and Solutions from the Data Trustee CRIS.NRW

18 pages•Published: October 19, 2026

Abstract

In 2025, the German federal state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) published its first State Research Report, jointly produced by the Ministry of Culture and Science and 32 higher-education institutions (14 universities, 18 universities of applied sciences). CRIS.NRW acted as data trustee. The report is aligned with the Core Data Set for Research (KDSF) standard, avoids inter-institutional rankings, and combines aggregated indicators (Part I) with institution-authored narratives in selected KDSF research fields (Part II). We processed 52 password-protected Excel files across 397 validated sheets and 734,328 rows spanning three reporting years. This extended abstract outlines governance and the trustee model (separation of duties, small-cell policies), pragmatic KDSF profiling, an auditable QA pipeline, a dual perspective on provider and trustee challenges, and an awards case vignette. We conclude with a concise blueprint for schema-based submissions, shared code lists, and an automation roadmap toward APIs and a public portal.

Keyphrases: cris.nrw, data trustee governance, germany, interoperability, kerndatensatz forschung (kdsf), open infrastructures, persistent identifiers (pids), quality assurance and schema validation, research information infrastructures, responsible research assessment, state level cris reporting

In: Pablo de Castro and Joachim Schöpfel (editors). Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Current Research Information Systems, vol 5, pages 36-53.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/Ct97
	https://doi.org/10.29007/d55v

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{CRIS2026:First_NRW_State_Research,
  author    = {Malte Kramer and Eva Maria Frechen},
  title     = {The First NRW State Research Report: Role, Challenges and Solutions from the Data Trustee CRIS.NRW},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Current Research Information Systems},
  editor    = {Pablo de Castro and Joachim Schöpfel},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Technology},
  volume    = {5},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2516-2322},
  url       = {/publications/paper/Ct97},
  doi       = {10.29007/d55v},
  pages     = {36-53},
  year      = {2026}}

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