Infoscience new platform – FAQ

What is Infoscience?

Infoscience is the institutional platform of EPFL for the dissemination of scientific publications and research results. It catalogues, preserves, and showcases the academic and scientific output of EPFL’s researchers, teachers, and students, making it freely accessible to the widest possible audience.

Why is Infoscience evolving to a new version?

The new version of Infoscience aims to offer a more intuitive and efficient platform. By adopting DSpace-CRIS, an open-source solution, the goal is to create a more open, collaborative, and inclusive ecosystem that better meets the needs of the scientific community.

What are the benefits and improvements of this new version?

The main objectives of the new version are to:

• present EPFL’s academic output in a comprehensive and interconnected manner, including publications, researcher profiles, and information on laboratories and research units.
• increase the visibility of the work conducted at EPFL by better adhering to international standards and facilitating data exchanges with external sources and third-party services.
• simplify and improve workflows (submissions, imports, etc.) through increased integration and automation.

Did some features disappear?

Most existing features are retained in the new version of Infoscience, with additional new options and improvements to enrich the user experience, such as:

• A personal dashboard to track submissions.
• The option to link your Infoscience profile with your ORCID profile.
• Integration of new data sources such as Scopus and arXiv, etc.
• The ability to import publications from a BibTeX file.
• Access to more comprehensive statistics and metrics.
• And many more new features…

How to access the new platform?

The new version is accessible at the same address: https://infoscience.epfl.ch.
During the version change, a banner will indicate that the update to the new platform is in place.

What are the login modalities for the new platform?

As before, browsing and searching on the Infoscience platform are available to all, both internal and external to EPFL, without requiring identification.

Authenticated access via EPFL GASPAR credentials and the Tequila gateway allows EPFL users to deposit their publications and access restricted documents.

Did the terms of use change?

Yes, a service charter, a deposit license, and terms of use now govern the use of the Infoscience platform and its content, as well as the responsibilities of the various stakeholders.

What happened to my publications?

No worries, all your publications were migrated to the new version and grouped in your profile for simplified access.

To access them, you need to log in to the platform, then click on your account > Profile > View Profile. You can also search for your publications from the homepage using the queries “author_editor:(first name last name)” or “cris.virtual.sciperId”.

Another option is to go to the Explore menu, then EPFL People, and search for your first and last name.

Were the associated files also migrated?

As indicated in this support article, files with restricted access to laboratories (Lab Only) or private (Private) were not migrated.

Do the links to the records still work?

At launch, links pointing to records in the old version of Infoscience automatically redirect to the corresponding records in the new version. Additionally, a new system of persistent identifiers called handle is implemented to ensure long-term accessibility to resources.

Are my EPFL DOIs still active?

In addition to uniquely identifying an object (such as a scientific publication or a dataset), the DOI facilitates redirection.

The DOIs assigned to your publications remain active after the migration and continue to provide access to the corresponding documents in the new version of Infoscience.

What happened to the old collections (including those of laboratories)?

The new version of Infoscience offers a redistributed structure in five main sections. Three of them correspond to EPFL’s missions:

• Research: for navigating publications by Faculties > Institutes > Laboratories or Units (collections from the old version of Infoscience).
• Education: student works such as master’s and bachelor’s theses as well as doctoral theses linked to doctoral programs.
• Innovation: patent
  

The Explore entry allows searching and browsing results by type:

• Academic works
• Author profiles
• EPFL units
• Journals
• Events (conferences, etc.)

Finally, the Statistics menu provides access to a dashboard of statistical indicators on the content hosted on Infoscience. To complete the offer, a search function on each page of the site allows you to query all content.

Do the access conditions to the files change? How does access to restricted documents work?

Infoscience offers three access modalities for linked files (full-texts, data, images…):

• Public access (open access)
• Restricted access (reserved for the EPFL community after authentication via Tequila)
• Access after an embargo period

For documents with restricted access, a copy request feature is offered to external users.

Does the document typology evolve?

The typology of documents accepted in Infoscience is expanding to more precisely reference works. The new classification is based on the COAR Resource Types Vocabulary standard. The complete list available covers 12 document types and collections:

• Books and Book parts
• Conferences, Workshops, Symposiums, and Seminars
• Datasets and Code
• EPFL thesis
• Images, Videos, Interactive resources, and Design
• Journal articles
• Newspaper, Magazine, or Blog post
• Patents
• Preprints and Working Papers
• Reports, Documentation, and Standards
• Student works
• Teaching Materials

What is the purpose of the user account? What are the new features related to my profile/user account?

The Infoscience user account offers several functions:

• Access documents reserved for the EPFL community.
• Submit your works according to the established workflow.
• Use a dashboard to track the status of your submissions, create new versions, and request corrections or updates to your records as an author.
• Consult and enrich a public researcher profile.
• As a director, access a public page to highlight the production of your unit or laboratory.

Who is able to deposit publications and works in Infoscience?

The EPFL community (professors, researchers, students, staff) can use Infoscience to:

1. Comply with EPFL’s and funders’ Open Access requirements.
2. Submit publications individually or in batches with features related to persistent identifiers (ORCID, DOI) and harvesting from major bibliographic databases.
3. Disseminate their publications in open access while respecting licenses and contractual commitments.

Submissions can be made directly by the author or by a delegate. An EPFL account is still required.

Does the submission process evolve?

As in the current version, when submitting a new record, the Infoscience team performs a metadata check and verifies the compliance of licenses and copyrights of linked files.

During this process, which lasts a maximum of 2 working days, the record you submitted remains visible  only to the submitter through the Infoscience dashboard.

How to assign a publication to my unit or laboratory (former role of lab manager)?

In the old version of Infoscience: lab managers received a validation request when their unit was newly added to a record. They then had to validate or reject the assignment of the record to their lab/unit.

In the new version: the assignment of publications is controlled by the Infoscience team based on the contributors’ affiliations. After publication, the head of unit or a designated person is able to manage the publications associated with their unit. An option allows them to independently remove or add the assignment to their unit.

Is regular feeding from reference bibliographic sources still active (Web of Science)?

The updated version of Infoscience continues to automatically harvest the Web of Science to detect new publications by EPFL members and import the corresponding metadata. The Infoscience team also adds full texts in Open Access when conditions permit. In the coming months, an evaluation will be conducted to integrate new connectors for automatic batch import from other external sources.

Is it possible to import publications already listed elsewhere?

The updated version of Infoscience offers distinct options to facilitate the entry or import of publications from external sources:

• Automatic entry by identifiers: by entering an identifier (DOI, SCOPUS, WOS, ArXiv, or PubMed) in the form, a large part of the required fields will be automatically pre-filled to simplify the creation of the record.
• Import metadata from external sources: this feature allows you to query multiple sources based on your request, display the results, and select those to add to Infoscience.
• Batch import via Bibtex: you can export BibTeX from your preferred bibliographic management tool and then upload this file to Infoscience to initiate a batch import. You can then complete certain information before submitting the publications to the database.

Do my publication lists still appear on my people page or that of my laboratory?

Unfortunately, the new version of Infoscience is not fully compatible with publication lists exported from the old system. Therefore, after the platform’s launch, the publication lists from the old version integrated into the EPFL website, lab pages, and personal pages remain accessible, but their content will be static.

You are able to recreate these publication lists from the new version of Infoscience by following the provided procedure (lists on People, lists on WordPress).

For any additional assistance, please consult the Infoscience help or contact support.

Can I link my ORCID to Infoscience?

If you have created an ORCID profile and linked your identifier to your EPFL account via the ORCID@EPFL service, you can activate the synchronization of publications between Infoscience and ORCID. This feature allows you to send publications reported in Infoscience to ORCID and import those from ORCID to Infoscience. 

Is it possible to export references from Infoscience? In which formats?

The new version of Infoscience is compatible with the main formats used by bibliographic management software, including RIS and BibTeX. It is also possible to export data in JSON, Excel, XML, and CSV formats.

Will my Infoscience publications be visible on Google Scholar?

Yes, compatibility between Infoscience and Google Scholar is maintained.

Infoscience pages include metadata optimized for indexing by major scientific search engines, including Google Scholar.

In addition to Google Scholar, other specialized search engines for scientific information use the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) metadata sharing protocol to harvest data from various sources such as institutional repositories and open archives.

Infoscience expose this data to OpenAIRE, a pan-European research information system that provides services for discovering, storing, linking, and analyzing research results across all disciplines.

Did the migration impact the usage statistics on my works?

Statistical information from the old system could not be migrated.

The updated version of Infoscience offers more comprehensive metrics including:

• Usage statistics specific to the platform (number of views and downloads).
• Alternative metrics (Altmetric badge).
• The ability to retrieve citation rates from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) sources.

Is there an API? With what features?

All metadata in Infoscience, including abstracts (unless otherwise indicated), are available for reuse under the public domain dedication (CC0). They can be used, modified, and redistributed without prior consent.

To comply with principles of open science and open data, Infoscience offers several mechanisms for exploiting or reusing its content:

• Deposit metadata is accessible via the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) (/server/oai) and a REST API interface (/server/api). For more information, refer to this link.
• Search functionalities on the API do not require an authorization token. Note that tokens used in the old version of Infoscience will be obsolete. You can generate a new token from your account on the new Infoscience platform, which will grant you read and write access according to the associated rights.

For extended rights, please contact the Infoscience team.

Where can I find documentation on the new tool?

The majority of documentation for Infoscience is available online.

Who should I contact for questions or problems?

For any questions, requests, or need for assistance, please contact [email protected].

Is training offered for the new platform?

• In addition to Infoscience help documentation, videos and guides will be available online to assist you in understanding certain features, such as the submission process.
• Infoscience support remains available via email at [email protected], 5 days a week, to address your questions.
• Finally, you can request a personalized appointment with a member of the Infoscience team to guide you through using the platform by following this link: Infoscience Appointment.