Partnership between RNP and Capes

The partnership with RNP has been a highlight at lectures and events conducted by the Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Capes), an agency of the Ministry of Education (MEC), responsible for the qualification of the National Graduation System.

On November 14, during the ceremony for the renewal of contracts for 2015 of the Journals Portal (Capes’ virtual library), held at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) headquarters, in Paris, France, president Jorge Guimarães not only stressed the organization’s work, but made an honorable mention to RNP and delivered, in hands, to Service and Solutions director, José Luiz Ribeiro Filho, a commemorative certificate.

On November 19, on both lectures that were presented on the XVIII National Seminar of University Libraries (Seminário Nacional de Bibliotecas Universitárias - SNBU), at the Minascentro Convention Center, in Belo Horizonte (MG), Capes analyst and Journals Portal librarian, Katyusha de Souza, listed the actions under development in partnership with RNP, among them the Digital Preservation Repository (backup of the Journals Portal), to assure the continuous, long-term access, even if the access to the portal is interrupted. Capes and RNP are also working on the deployment of a geographical redundancy of Journals Portal’s critical outside of RNP’s Internet Data Center (IDC-RNP), where systems are hosted and internet access is privileged. In case of failure, the service may be reestablished in a few hours.

RNP and CAPES Partnership

RNP coordinates various initiatives on the Solutions Management Adjunct Board and, among them, is the Digital Solutions for Education, aiming to apply advanced networks technologies on caring for the public educational policy area, coordinated by MEC and operated by its agencies, such as the Capes, responsible for the qualification of the National Graduation System, by the authorization of new master's degrees, academic and professional, and doctoral degrees, besides the evaluation of existing programs.

In 2009, RNP created a search tool integrated to the acquis of Capes’ Journals Portal, a virtual library that gathers high-quality content, provided by international editors and scientific associations. It makes the best of international scientific production available to teaching and research institutions, through a collection of over 36 thousand journals and 250 thousand electronic books. It also offers 130 referential bases, 12 patent bases (certified inventions), in addition to encyclopedias and reference works, statistics, technical standards, thesis and dissertation basis, and audiovisual content.

RNP performs the portal’s entire technical monitoring. The searches may be performed by author, title, subject or keyword, with remote access and mobile devices as options. The “Meu Espaço” (My Space) section allows the researcher (student of teacher) to assemble their own search sets, save and create alerts for searches already performed through the portal’s acquis and save their favorite articles, journals and databases to a permanent virtual space.

The Journals Portal content may be accessed in a free manner by researchers on the participant institutions. Currently, approximately 424 Brazilian teaching and research institutions are registered. The Universities of São Paulo (USP) and Brasília (UnB), the Federal Universities of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Minas Gerais (UFMG), Santa Catarina (UFSC), Paraná (UFPR), São Paulo (Unifesp), the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), the Brazilian Corporation of Agricultural Research (Embrapa) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS) are among the portal’s largest users.

The Journals Portal was created in 2000, due to the access deficit of Brazilian libraries to international scientific information and the regional unevenness between the universities of the federal higher education system. It aims to promote the strengthening of the post-graduation programs in Brazil through the democratization of online access to high-quality international scientific information. Considering a libraries consortium model that is unique in the world, it is also the initiative of its kind with the largest capillarity by covering the entire national territory.

Currently, the Journals Portal meets the demands of the academic, productive and governmental sectors, and provides the increase in national scientific production and the growth of the Brazilian scientific insertion abroad. It is an essential tool for the teaching and research activities in Brazil, and to Capes attributions to fostering, evaluating and regulating the Post-Graduation and scientific research courses in the country.

Other actions with RNP directories

In addition to the Solutions Management Adjunct Board, Capes also closed deals with two RNP directories: Service Management Adjunct Board and Services and Solutions Board.

Through the Service Management Adjunct Board, Capes became the first federal authority linked to MEC and the second point in Brasília, after RNP itself, to be a client of the eduroam service, network for secure access to wireless internet, developed for the international research and education community, which is managed and operated in Brazil by RNP. Capes’ adhesion to the service facilitates connection process by rectors, directors, researchers, students and professionals linked to teaching and research institutions, which already enjoy the service on their institutions, and that now may rely on the service at Capes. Besides, the authority professionals themselves may visit other institutions in Brazil and worldwide, using their original credentials (login and password).

With Capes adhesion, eduroam now has 28 new clients throughout the country. Among them, the Federal Education, Science and Technology Institutes of Espírito Santo (IFES), Piauí (IFPI), Santa Catarina (IFSC) and Northern Minas Gerais (IFNMG); the National Pure and Applied Mathematics Institute (Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada - IMPA); the Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences (Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins - MAST); the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS); and the Federal Universities of Goiás (UFG), São Paulo (USP), Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), Minas Gerais (UFMG), Rondônia (UNIR), Santa Catarina (UFSC), Ceará (UFC), Espírito Santo (UFES), Pará (UFPA), Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and the Fluminense Federal University (UFF).

Through the Networks School (Escola Superior de Redes – ESR), the Services and Solutions Board management unit, 104 Capes servers were enabled over 2014. The themes of the courses involve Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Governance, Information security and networking courses. This represents an increase of over 200% compared to the qualification made in 2013.