New cooperation agreement between FCT and CNPq of Brazil

The FCT and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), an entity linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Brazil and responsible for financing research in the areas of science and technology, began a new partnership last November, which aims to share information and develop joint projects between the curricular management platforms CIÊNCIAVITAE (Portuguese) and Lattes (Brazilian). The video of the session in which the cooperation agreement was signed is available for viewing.

The main objective of this protocol is to strengthen cooperation between Portugal and Brazil, in a continuation of the sharing of experience and good practices and active cooperation in the field of normative references, infrastructures and science and technology management services. One of the first tasks will be to assess the compatibility of the CIÊNCIAVITAE and Lattes platforms, with a view to unifying the support software and, eventually, integrating the platforms.

Since 2014, FCT has been dedicating efforts and investing in the modernization of its information systems, recognizing that simplifying procedures inherent to the administrative management of the science, technology and higher education ecosystem is fundamental to stimulating innovation and enabling the democratization of access to and production of knowledge. In this context, a new system for managing funding applications was developed – MyFCT – and the PTCRIS program was launched, which, through the development of standards and infrastructures for science and technology management, aims to ensure, on the one hand, the debureaucratization and simplification of administrative processes, and on the other, the production, management and access to reliable, complete and updated data, as a tool to support the effectiveness and efficiency of decision-making processes. The first system entirely based on the PTCRIS standard is CIÊNCIAVITAE, the national platform for managing science and technology curricula.

These processes involved collaboration with Brazil from the outset. The DeGóis platform, predecessor of CIÊNCIAVITAE and on whose code it was based, was the result of an agreement for the use of Lattes in Portugal, signed in 2005. In addition to this, in 2014/2015 the FCT also signed an agreement with the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (IBICT) to share experiences and good practices. It is in this context of historical cooperation between two countries in this field that the FCT signs this International Cooperation Agreement, foreseeing mutual benefit.

Both CIÊNCIAVITAE and Lattes are fundamental for the scientific and technological management of their respective countries, investing in the simplification and integration of processes. Lattes has been adopted by most funding institutions, universities and research institutes in Brazil, allowing the compilation of databases of personal CVs. Currently, Lattes includes more than 3.5 million CVs, research groups and institutions in a single information system. CIÊNCIAVITAE, based on the concept of scientific citizenship (CIÊNCIA ID), was implemented in the format of an integrated and personalized repository of researchers' trajectories in science, bringing together several national and international information management systems, allowing the burden of bureaucratic processes to be minimized and complying with the principle of “introduce once, reuse multiple times”, also providing the possibility of personalizing and promoting the curriculum.

The integration of the curriculum management platforms of Portugal and Brazil is a possibility of mutual interest for the FCT and CNPq, and could enhance the development of a joint, strongly collaborative system between Portuguese-speaking countries.