SIGAPS: a prototype of bibliographic tool for medical research evaluation

Evaluation of research activity is extremely important but remains a complex domain. There's no standardized methods and evaluation is often based on the scientific publications. It is easy to identify, for a researcher, all the publications realized over a given period of time. At the level of an important establishment like an University Hospital, with about 500 researchers, this sort of inventory is very difficult to realize: we have to list the researchers, to list their publications, to determine the quality of articles produced, to store retrieved data and to calculate summary statistics. We have developed a full-Web prototype, using free software which, for a given researchers' list, interrogates the Pubmed server, downloads the found references and stores them in a local database. They are then enriched with local data which allow the realization of more or less complex analyses, the automatic production of reports, or keyword search. This tool is very easy to use, allowing for immediate analysis of publications of a researcher or a research team. This tool will allow to identify those active teams to be maintained or emergent teams to be supported. It will also allow to compare candidate profiles for appointments to research posts.