Visit of a Delegation from the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China

A delegation from the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC) visited the premises of National Documentation Centre (EKT) in September. The delegation consisted of researchers Dong Cheng, Chen Baixue, Xian Xin and Chen Liang, who were welcomed by representatives of EKT.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss topics of mutual interest to both institutions: standardization, interoperability, long-term preservation, and open access to scientific knowledge, literature, and data. National and European initiatives in the field of Open Science were also presented. Both institutions showcased their missions and work, aiming to establish the basis for future collaborations.

The meeting began with a presentation by Margaritis Proedrou, Head of the Communication and Public Relations Department at EKT. He outlined the national role of EKT in collecting, organizing, documenting, disseminating, and digitally preserving scientific, research, and cultural content. He also described EKT’s initiatives for open access, the transformation of data into knowledge for educational and social purposes, as well as the production and provision of statistical data and indicators in the fields of research, development, and innovation.

Dr. Chen Liang presented the work of ISTIC, describing its history, its leading role in China’s National Science and Technology Information System, and its international collaborations.

He emphasized that ISTIC supports the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and other government agencies in decision-making, while also providing information services for enterprises, colleges, universities, and researchers. Moreover, ISTIC offers postgraduate and doctoral programs in collaboration with universities.

At the same time, ISTIC promotes digitization, standardization, networking, and the intelligent transformation of scientific and technical information resources.

Elena Lagoudi, Digital Collections Editor at EKT, presented openarchives.gr, the open public portal providing central access to 141 digital collections from 115 institutions, including universities, research institutes, and scientific societies. She explained the metadata fields describing scientific records, which enhance search functionality, and presented the platform’s recent upgrade.

Agathi Papanoti, Head of Aggregation and Semantic Enrichment at EKT, presented searchculture.gr, the national cultural aggregator providing access to over 1,000,000 items from 114 institutions across the country. She described its development, its collaboration with Europeana (where it serves as the accredited national aggregator), and the semantic enrichment of metadata, which facilitates content discovery and thematic exhibitions.

She also presented semantics.gr, EKT’s infrastructure that supports the creation, curation, linking, and publication of vocabularies, thesauri, taxonomies, and authority lists as Open Linked Data. These data sets are used to enhance metadata fields for both openarchives.gr and searchculture.gr.

Dr. Vasiliki Apostolopoulou, Head of Content Services Support Unit at EKT, introduced ePublishing, EKT’s open-access publishing service for scientific journals, conference proceedings, and monographs. The service currently hosts 86 journals (eJournals), 23 conference proceedings series (eProceedings), and 61 monographs (eBooks). She explained how ePublishing promotes Open Access by offering complete workflows, from submission to publication, including DOI assignment and rich metadata. The service is aligned with the National Open Science Strategy and international interoperability standards, contributing to a Unified Digital Public Space for science and culture.

Dr. Iraklis Katsaloulis, member of EKT’s Open Science team, presented EKT’s participation in the OPERAS project (Open Scholarly Communication in the European Research Area for Social Sciences and Humanities), a European research infrastructure serving open scholarly communication in SSH. He outlined the development of OPERAS, its key pillars, and services such as GoTriple, Pathfinder, and Hypotheses.

The discussions revealed significant common research interests and opened the way for collaboration to strengthen the research and innovation ecosystems of Greece and China.

It is noteworthy that EKT and ISTIC had already signed a cooperation agreement in 2012, aiming to enhance bilateral relations in scientific and technical information and to promote science and technology in both countries. Since then, several visits of ISTIC officials to EKT have taken place, further reinforcing communication and the exchange of knowledge and expertise.

About the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC)

The Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC), established on October 2nd, 1956, is a national-level scientific and technological information research institute directly under the Ministry of Science and Technology. It mainly provides comprehensive information services for enterprises, universities, research institutes and scientific research personnel, and provides decision-making support for administrative departments. With application-oriented product development and platform services, it integrates resources, talents and technologies, to strive to build an International Think Tank of Innovation Strategy, the National Science and Technology Information Big Data Center and the National Engineering Center of Science and Technology Information.

ISTIC has always adhered to the concept of openness and actively carried out exchanges and cooperation at home and abroad. ISTIC has established regular communication mechanisms with key universities such as Peking University, Nanjing University, Zhejiang University, Wuhan University, and Jilin University in teaching, cooperative research, talent introduction, and academic exchanges, and has carried out in-depth exchanges and cooperation with various professional and local scientific and technological information institutions. In terms of international cooperation, ISTIC has established long-term and stable business cooperation relations with relevant research institutions in the United States, Canada, Japan and other countries and regions, and has become an important platform for international cooperation and exchange in the field of science and technology information in China.

Looking forward to the future, ISTIC will cooperate with domestic and foreign counterparts to provide high-quality and efficient all-round scientific and technological information services for all kinds of innovative subjects with a more open concept.