The Importance of User Involvement in the Development of the Norwegian Research Information Repository

7 pages•Published: October 19, 2026

Hanne Hole Young, Marit Henningsen and Anders Eivind Bråten

Abstract

This paper examines how systematic user involvement helped shape the design and development of the Norwegian Research Information Repository (NVA), a national infrastructure for open access and research information, which was developed as a project using an iterative and agile approach. An expansion of the scope introduced a higher degree of complexity than anticipated. This introduced challenges related to functional diversity and institutional heterogeneity that the project underestimated. Additionally, large volumes of feedback from the user community proved difficult to handle by the people involved in the design and development process. To address this, a tighter collaboration with internal experts on CRIS was established, and different forms for user participation were introduced. This helped identify key functional requirements, improve the user interface, and align workflows with existing research administration practices. The examination of the user involvement process resulted in five distinct recommendations for similar national projects: secure early but structured user representation, anchor work at both operational and strategic levels, involve CRIS experts from the outset, phase and prioritise user involvement, and communicate clearly about development processes and how user feedback will be handled.

Keyphrases: national cris, norway, open science, research information repository, research infrastructures, user involvement

In: Pablo de Castro and Joachim Schöpfel (editors). Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Current Research Information Systems, vol 5, pages 64-70.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/GTbMQ
	https://doi.org/10.29007/w21z

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{CRIS2026:Importance_User_Involvement_Development,
  author    = {Hanne Hole Young and Marit Henningsen and Anders Eivind Bråten},
  title     = {The Importance of User Involvement in the Development of the Norwegian Research Information Repository},
  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/GTbMQ},
  doi       = {10.29007/w21z},
  pages     = {64-70},
  year      = {2026}}

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