# Regional Information Center for Science and Technology

Regional Information Center for Science and Technology (RICeST) (Persian: مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رسانی علوم و فناوری) is an Iranian governmental organisation established to promote the production and distribution of scientific information in Iran and Islamic countries, providing reference, study and bibliographical information and related services. It also undertakes scientometrics based on its databases of scientific products of Iran and Islamic countries.
It was established as Regional Library of Science and Technology (RLST) in 1991 by agreement between Iran's Ministry of Culture and Higher Education and the Third-World Academy of Sciences, with professor Jafar Mehrad as the director. It is currently under the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. It is also known as the Shiraz Regional Library of Sciences and Technology (SRLST) Before the Internet was established in Iran, RICeST fulfilled its objectives by setting up a Bulletin Board Service to allow electronic access to the information sources it was collating.

## Finances

In 1993, it was approved for an independent budget of 1800 million Rials. Around the same time it obtained a loan from the Islamic Development Bank for $15 million.
As of 2008, the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology provides RICeST annually with about one million dollars to purchase scientific journals. RICeST allocated about one million and 600 thousand dollars each year to purchase journals in languages other than Persian.

## Regional Information Center for Science & Technology

* Presidency
   * President Office
   * Office of International Scientific Cooperation
   * Plan and Program department
* Deputy Finance and Administration
   * Financial Administrative Affairs
   * Administrative affairs
   * Financial Department
* Research Deputy
   * Research Deputy
   * Designing and System Operation Research Group
   * Research Department of Information Management
   * Research Department of Evaluation and Collection Development
   * Research Department of Computational Linguistics
   * Information and Communication Technology Department
   * Office of Information Services

## Branches

National Branches
* Urmia University
* Shahr-e-Kord University
* Hormozgan University
* Isfahan Municipality
* Hamedan University
* Sahand University of Technology
* Yasouj University
* Zanjan University
* Kermanshah Razi University
* Gilan University
* Qazvin Islamic Development Organization
* University of Sistan and Baluchestan
Forient Branches
* Teeshrin University (Syria)
* National Information Center (Yemen)

## Databases

RICeST has created, maintained and provided access to many subject matter bibliographic databases and directories. In 2006 RICeST started collected journals in art, humanities and social sciences
Persian General Databases
* Integrated Database
* E-Articles
* E-Journals
* E-Books
* E-Atlases & Maps
* Research Reports
* Conference Articles
* Abstrans
* Iranian Universities Libraries
* EDMS
* Databank for Higher Education Graduates in LIS
* Library Catalogue
* Database of Standard Questionnaires and Tests of Educational Science and Psychology Dissertation of Iran
Persian Subject Databases
* IR.Compendex
* Iran Lisa
* Iranian Experts
* Transportation
* Earthquake
* Energy
* Flood
* IR. Industries
* IR. Metallurgical Industries
* Environment
* Mines of IRAN
* Standards
Non Persian Databases
* Islamic E-Manuscripts
* Content Search
* Scientific Articles
* E-Theses & Dissertations

## IRAN Journals

* Persian E-Articles
* Arabic E-Articles
* English E-Articles
* Persian Journal Search
* Persian E-Journals
* Arabic E-Journals
* English E-Journals
* Accredited Journals
* International Journal of Information Science and Management (IJISM)

## Library Automation Software

A team of IT and librarianship experts contributed to developing the library automation software with the following specifications:
* Thesaurus based
* Supports barcode & RFID
* Workflow automation
* Import data from other databases
* Reduced Redundancy
* Fast search ability
* Relational Database
* Low cost database Design
* Non Redundant subjective DBS
* Journals automation system
* Source availability
* Web based App
* Unicode support
* Normalized relation database
* Full text search engine
* Uses 3 layered Approach

## Research Project

* A feasibility of doing interlanguage information retrieval by Google machine translation
* System of information transmission from Persian journals XML file to RICeST system
* Feasibility of using concept-based readability in Persian domain specific information retrieval
* Machine stemmer of past, present and future simple verbs
* Examining and assessing methods and processes of publishing journals
* The Challenges of Persian Natural Language Processing
* Design and implementation of a new structure of ISC database
* Designing ISC content list in Persian/ ISCI citation reports + h-index /rewriting Persian highly cited proceedings database
* Citation analysis of Persian humanities journals in ISC database within 2003-2007
* Database of standard questionnaires and tests of educational sciences theses within 2005- 2007
* Evaluating websites of the universities and research centers affiliated to the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology & the Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education and Islamic Azad Universities
* Database of Content Search
* Full text formatting of the database of ISI citation index
* Persian past and present stemmer of intransitive verbs of Persian language
* Top 20 countries’ scientific production status
* Database of computer sciences and engineering abstracts
* Iran LISA database
* Structuring derivational word in Persian language
* A comprehensive database of undergraduate students of library and information sciences of Iran from the beginning up to 2004
* Database of scientific and research publication of faculty members of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, I. R. of Iran
* Design and implementation of manuscripts in electronics format at RLST on the internet
* Database of Maps and Atlases (Design and implementation on the Web)
* Iran's and Islamic countries Science Citation Index(SCI)
* Database of Iran's Supreme court votes
* System for documents electronic management
* Design & Implementation of Persian E-Journals on the Internet
* Database of Iranian Metallurgical Industries with Related Standards: Design and Implementation on the Web
* Assessment of the Use of Artificial Neural Network for information Retrieval in RLST's Databases
* Design & Implementation of a Web-Based Persian E-Books
* Design & Implementation of a Web-Based Persian E-Articles