Origin
From 1993 to 1999, the CNPq has credentialed its counselors using paper forms, DOS environment system (BCUSS) and specific curriculum system (MiniCurriculum). In this period, the Agency has accumulated approximately 35 thousand curricular records of the country’s S&T activities. Although the instruments have made feasible the Agency fomentation operations, the nature of the information hindered the full use of this operation in other management processes in S&T (for instance, it was not possible to separate co-authors or even account for the co-authorship indexes in the curricula).
Lattes CV Conception
From 1998 to 1999, the CNPq performed a survey with the ad hoc consultants community aiming at establishing a curriculum model that would satisfy both its operation management needs and S&T planning and management. In addition to that, the development group ? UFSC [Federal University of Santa Catarina] Grupo Stela [Stela Group] ? has included in the electronic form, numerous functionalities that were greatly requested by the scientific community, such as configurable reports, output to other sources, production indicators, individualized dictionaries, importing data filled in other curriculum systems, etc.
From March to April, 1999, 140 of the 400 consultants that answered the research evaluated the Lattes curriculum first prototype (named CV-Genos at the time). The general evaluation reached 4,5 in a 0 (awful) to 5 (excellent) scale.
Development and release
In May 1999, the CNPq and CAPES agreed about the full compatibilization of the new CNPq curriculum with the post-graduation data, under the view of the individuals of a Program (researchers, professors or students). The meeting of the agencies resulted in the modification of the prototype, that turned into the Lattes Curricula System, and has been released on August 16 th, 1999.
In the first two years of the Lattes Curricula System, the coverage of curricula linked to S&T increased in more than 300%, based previously on 35,000 registrations being incremented for more than 100 thousand curricula.
Interaction with other S&T bases
In July 2000, CNPq’s General Computers Coordination started a work of interchange with other institutions linked to the S&T in the Country. The result was the dynamic linking of the Lattes curricula in the CNPq, with reference to the same researcher in other databases. At the same time building the offline form, the CNPq General Computers Coordination also worked in the online tool, which works on a Web platform and allows the researchers to update their curricula directly in the CNPq base.
In this interchange work, the CNPq has linked the Lattes curricula to: INPI [Intellectual Property National Institute], for dynamic presentation of the researchers registration patents; SCIELO [ Scientific Electronic Library Online], LILAC [ Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences] , MEDLINE (result of an agreement with BIREME [Regional Medicine Library]), for reading the complete texts published by the researchers (and for linking with the co-authors’ curricula); with the universities, for links with these researchers’ institutional bases.
XML standards and opening
In 2000, the Higher Education Federal Institutions gathered their computers teams in the IFES (UFOP – Ouro Preto) Information Systems Workshop, and invited the federal agencies to the construction of a unique information model, aiming at rationalizing the data capturing process in the Science and Technology Education Federal System.
In the occasion, the CNPq was available to construct the specific project for satisfying this demand, but stressed the necessity of maintaining the confidentiality of the information (and the operational Platform) of the researchers, since they are the main subside to the fomentation process.
In February, 2001, UFSC, UNICAMP, UFRJ, USP, UFRGS, UFBA and UFRN, universities that had looked for the CNPq requesting the technologic opening of its platform, participated in a workshop in the Agency, aiming the construction of the Lattes Platform Marking Language (LMPL), under the coordination of CGINF/CNPQ, being the development works conducted by the UFSC’s Grupo Stela
As a result of this meeting, the LMPL Virtual Community was formed, and defined the DTD (Data Type Definition) XML Model of the Lattes Curriculum, that integrates the version 1.4. With this model, the Brazilian universities can extract information of the Lattes curriculum and/or generate information to it from their corporative systems. The project made feasible the opening of the Lattes Platform, from the data content point of view, and kept unchanged the technical access to the information, preserving the safety of the researchers.
Lattes CV internationalization: CvLAC Curriculum
In July, 2000, BIREME promoted a meeting in São Paulo, in which the CNPq was invited to show their expertise with the Lattes Platform. In this meeting, representatives of Conicyts of Chile, Venezuela and Mexico, and of the Pan-American Health Organization were present.
The CNPq presented the Research Groups Directory and the access site to the Lates Curriculum System, which arose the interest of the Pan-American Health Organization, which constructed a Latin-American form, called CvLAC, from the experience of the Brazilian curriculum. The Grupo Stela was hired for this purpose, starting the works in February 2001, and the CNPq made the Platform available for free, so that the project would advance in the Latin-American sphere.
In April 2001, a great conference took place, and more than 500 people were present, among which were representatives of the Conicyts and representatives of the virtual libraries, mainly Scielo. The CNPq presented the whole history of the construction of the Lattes platform. From then on, the project caught the attention not only of the health area of the Latin-American countries ? which had the acknowledgment of the Pan-American Health Organization ? but also of the Conicyt operation itself.
Recently, the CNPq was in Mexico and in Colombia to show the construction of the Platform from the Lattes Curriculum System and the Brazilian Research Groups Directory, which resulted in the construction of one Science and Technology Directory with the Brazilian and the Colombian groups in unified search