Int'l Conf. Frontiers in Education: CS and CE | FECS'15 |103

Improvement of Researcher Database System
Tetsuya Oishi1 , Noriko Kuwano1 , Masao Mori2 , Eiichi Takata1 , and Shigeru Kusakabe3
1 Ofﬁce of Institutional Research, Kyushu University, Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka-ken, Japan
2 Ofﬁce of Contents Utilization and Institutional Research, Center of University Management,
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Meguro-ku, Tokyo-to, Japan
3 Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka-ken, Japan

Abstract— Most universities around the world must be
accredited in order to assure and enhance the quality of education. Japanese universities also are under accreditation by
the government as well. They must undergo certiﬁed evaluation and accreditation periodically, which is conductedby organizations certiﬁed by the Japanese Minister of Education. Accreditation committees evaluate every university
based on the Standards for Evaluation and Accreditation
by reviewing the self-assessment reports. That is why it isimportant for universities to pursuit their advantages and tocreate high quality self-assessment report. To present someadvantages in the report, the university staffs have to obtain
the evidences demonstrating some effects or outcomes. Our
university has the “Researcher Database System” in which
all faculties can store their activities. This system is used for
not only accumulating but also self-assessment. Moreover,the data which are accumulated in this system are madepublic in the “Kyushu University Academic Staff Educational and Research Activities Database”. In this paper, we
describe the outline of “Researcher Database System” andits improvement.
Keywords: Database, Big data, Web System, Institutional Research

1. Introduction
There are two major evaluations for National University
Corporation in Japan. One is Certiﬁed Evaluation and Accreditation, and another is National University Corporation
Evaluation.
The former is the mandatory evaluation process for universities. This evaluation is covering overall conditions ofeducation and research conducted by certiﬁed evaluation andaccreditation organizations. In Japan, all higher education
institutions are obliged to assess their activities in order
to assure and enhance the quality of the institution. These
institutions also have to undergo certiﬁed evaluation andaccreditation periodically. This evaluation is conducted byorganizations certiﬁed by the Minister of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Certiﬁed Evaluation and Accreditation was introduced to contribute to thefurther development of Japanese higher education in 2004.

The latter is performance-based evaluation of national
university corporations in respect of their attainment of their
mid-term objectives, mid-term plans and annual plans foreducation, research and management.
Mid-term objectives mean individual corporate objectives that Japanese national university corporations
should achieve over a six-year period. These objectives
are made public.
• Mid-term plans are developed by Japanese national
university corporations in order to achieve their midterm objectives. These plans are made public too.
• Annual plans are developed by Japanese national university corporations in order to achieve their mid-termplans.
•The National University Corporation Evaluation Committee
is entirely responsible for this evaluation. This committee
was established within MEXT pursuant to the Cabinet Orderof October 1, 2003.
In order to obtain good evaluation, we have to explain ourconditions of education and research obviously. Moreover
we have to gather enough evidences to explain them. We
have some web systems to gather evidences. There is the“Researcher Database of Kyushu University” which is one ofthese systems. The data which are inputted from this system
are made public partially in the “Academic Staff Educational
and Research Activities Database”. We have improved the“Researcher Database of Kyushu University”.
In Section 2, we describe the “Researcher Database of
Kyushu University”. Then we explain the improvement of
the system in Section 3, and compare the condition before
improvement with the condition after improvement in Section 4. Finally, we summarize our results in Section 5.

2. Researcher Database of Kyushu University
In Kyushu University, the “Researcher Database of
Kyushu University” is operating. This is the system which
is operating in our university on the web. All teachers in our
university can enter various data into the system. The systemis operated by a top-down management style. In brief, all104Int'l Conf. Frontiers in Education: CS and CE | FECS'15 |teachers have to use the system. In this section, we explain
this system.

2.1 Purpose
The “Researcher Database of Kyushu University” wascreated for self-assessment of all teachers in Kyushu University [1][2][3][4]. They can enter their educational andresearching situations into the system. By entering various
data into the system, the level of education and research forteachers is expected to be improved in our university. Then
our university can achieve aims of our university and social
missions.
The system is composed of data entered by teachers basedon teachers’ self-assessment. The major purposes of thesystem are as follows.
1) The data entered by teachers are sources to establish
management policies or future plans.
2) Japanese national universities, including our university,
must be conducted evaluation by third-party organizations. In order to report to the third-party organizations, the data entered by teachers are used as basic
information or sources.
3) In our university, the teachers have to report theiractivities to our university every year. The data enteredby using the system are also used to report them.
4) These data are made public. The activities of education, research, social cooperation, and international exchange are promoted by the public information. After
we receive opinions and proposals against the public
information from the world, we have to understand therequests from the world accurately.
5) We have to store the basic data related to educationaland researching activities. We also have to survey thesedata.

2.2 Entering Data
All teacher in Kyushu University can and must enter theiractivities to the system. They have to enter their activities
on their own responsibilities. Every department must decide
whether the following descriptions should make public.
• Descriptions of defamation for other people• Descriptions against facts• Descriptions of injustices• Descriptions against the aim of education and research
These departments, in which the teachers describe suchthings, have to urge the teachers to re-think these descriptions. All teachers have to make an effort to update
descriptions they have already entered.

2.3 Data Application
We can take advantage of the data entered by teachers.
We also have to obey the following things.
1) The data entered by teachers are never used except forthe purposes mentioned in Section 2.1.

2) Some of the data, which are agreed to make public by
the committee in our university, are made public in the“Academic Staff Educational and Research Activities
Database” [5] operated by Kyushu University.
3) When someone would like to use the data based on
the purposes shown in Section 2.1, he or she must be
approved by the person in charge of the system.
4) When someone is approved of using the data, the factmust be reported to the committee.
5) The staffs who belong to Ofﬁce of Institutional Research monitor the condition of using data.
6) When the data, which are made public in the“Academic Staff Educational and Research Activities
Database”, are provided to outsiders, the committee
must approve it.
7) When making the data public or providing the data, wehave to take care not to injure the speciﬁc individual
right or proﬁt.

2.4 Present Situation
In this section, we show the present situation on operating
the “Researcher Database of Kyushu University”.
2.4.1 Environment
This system is one of web systems and is working ona blade server. As we introduced a ﬁrewall, the network
security is strong. The room where the server is placed isearthquake-proof. So the server is also protected physically.
This system is constructed by using Ruby. Ruby is oneof object-oriented programming languages. Especially, we
use Ruby on Rails which is an open source web application
framework written in Ruby. We can customize the systemfreely because it is constructed by open source. The reason
why we use the open source is that we have to develop
the system. So, the system is working and is developing inparallel.
2.4.2 Restriction
All teachers can use this system on the Kyushu University
network. But they can’t use this system at the outside of
Kyushu University. While we can enter the data of ourpresentations, papers, books, and so on, we can also enter
the data of personal information such as students’ names.
The leak of personal information not only can cause badreputation but also can lose conﬁdences from the world.
We have to maintain this system. The way of maintenanceis stricter than the way of using this system. In order tomaintain this system, we can access this system using SSH
port only from Ofﬁce of Institutional Research, where webelong. We cooperate a certain programmer company. Even
the programmers from the company can not access thissystem through SSH port except for our room.

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Fig. 1: The relation of three systems

We must protect the data the teachers entered. Moreover
we must also prevent human errors. Then we introduced thevery strong restriction.
2.4.3 Cooperation of Data to Outside
The data entered into this system are used in the “Faculty
Assessment System” in Kyushu University. The data, forexample, presentations, papers, books, and so on, can used in
the “Faculty Assessment System”. All teachers are assessed
through “Faculty Assessment System” (Fig. 1).
We also have “Academic Staff Educational and Research
Activities Database” system. This is the web system to makethe teachers’ information public. The teachers can decide
whether they make each data public individually. Once theypress the “submit” button, their information can be madepublic.

2.4.4 Cooperation of Data into Inside

We can use other data in order to enhance our data.
In the system, we can enter the data of our papers. A
paper data is composed of the title of paper, the authors’
name, the authors’ afﬁliations, the pages, and so on. It
is very troublesome to enter these information. Then we
use API provided by Thomson Reuter in order to enter
these information automatically. At least, the bibliographic
information is entered automatically.
However, the system can treat only text information suchas the bibliographic information. Our university has own
Library. The Library has repository system to store papers,
books, and so on. We can relate the bibliographic information with its entity. This information of the entity not only isstored in the system but also is made public on “Academic
Staff Educational and Research Activities Database”.

106

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Fig. 2: Access to the system from inside or outside

2.4.5 Input Situation
All teacher not only can but also must enter the data.
We have check the situations how many teachers havecompleted to enter the data. There are two points of view
when checking input situation.
1) A teacher has to enter all items into the system.
2) A teacher has to enter at least one data a year.
If breaking the rule, the department where such teachers
belong is imposed a penalty. To say concretely, the subsidy
to the department is reduced.

3. Improvement
Considering the present situation, we have improved thesystem many times. In this section, we show some major
improvements.

3.1 Access from Outside
Basically, the system is accessed in Kyushu University
only. However, many teachers thought that they would like toenter many data from outside (Fig. 2). As we have to prohibit
all teachers from entering personal information from outside,
we have permitted them entering a part of data except
for personal information. What the teacher can enter fromoutside are “Presentations at academic society meetings,
etc.”, “Original papers”, “Books authored”, “Review papers,
critiques, commentaries, book reviews, reports, etc.”, and soon.
In order to realize entering from outside securely, we used
QMAX [6]. QMAX is the omission of “Kyushu University
Matrix AuthN System”. QMAX is a reverse web proxy type
SSO (Single Sign On) system. All teachers have own IC
staff card that has matrix of numbers. They can login thesystem by using the number from the matrix.

3.2 Searching Papers
The teachers can insert the bibliographic informationof papers into the system. For example, the bibliographic
information are as follows.
• Paper title

Int'l Conf. Frontiers in Education: CS and CE | FECS'15 |107

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Fig. 3: Search for paper

Authors’ names
Volume• Number• Starting page
• End page
• ISBN• ISSNThe teacher can also insert other information except for the
information listed above into the system, but it is very troublesome work. If there are the information we can use easily
and automatically, we think that we can add information byusing its information. So, as mentioned in Section 2.4.4,
we decided to use the API provided by Thomson Reuter.
The API can provide not only the major bibliographic
information but also the other important information suchas the number of citations.
If there are the information which have already been
inserted into the system, we also think that we can use
its information (Fig. 3). For example, we assume that apaper is written by two authors. If the ﬁrst author havealready inserted the bibliographic information of the paper
into the system, it is useful for the second author to use
the bibliographic information the ﬁrst author wrote. In thesystem, the teachers can search papers which have been
already stored and can insert bibliographic information into
the system by using the information of the paper.
••

3.3 Authors’ Names
All teacher can insert the basic information as a faculty
member into the system. The teacher’s name is includedin the basic informations. The teacher can write his or her
name freely, such as “Tetsuya Oishi”, “Tetsuya OISHI”, “T.
Oishi”, and so on.
The bibliographic information includes authors’ names. In
this system, the teacher can search other teacher as a author
and include his or her name in the bibliographic information.
In this case, the author’s name to show is the string he or

she has already inserted into the system. I give an example
using my name.
I suppose that I have already registered my name as“Tetsuya Oishi”. If the other teacher would like to register
my name as an author, my name is shown in the teacher’s
information as “Tetsuya Oishi”. If I have already registered
my name as “Tetsuya OISHI”, my name shown in otherteacher’s bibliography also becomes “Tetsuya OISHI”.
I show an example which are shown in Table 1. Whencreating a bibliographic information by using the example,
it becomes as follows.
Tetsuya OISHI, Noriko Kuwano, Example of Title,
Example of Journal, pp.51-58, 2015.7.
Then, I would like to show as follows.
Tetsuya OISHI, Noriko KUWANO, Example of
Title, Example of Journal, pp.51-58, 2015.7.
The differences of these appearance are the underlined
words. In order to show the bibliographic information as
the second appearance, I have to ask the second author tochange her name to capital letters.
Therefore, we improve the system that the teachers canchange the authors’ name in the bibliographic information
instead of changing the appearance of each name. The
improvement can contribute the teachers in various ﬁelds
as follows.
“Tetsuya Oishi”: Generally, the names are appeared on
the bibliographic information by using the style which
the ﬁrst letters are the capital letters.
• “Tetsuya OISHI”: In other ﬁelds, while the ﬁrst letteris the capital letter in the ﬁrst name, all letters are thecapital letters in the last name.
• “T. Oishi”: There are the teachers who would like to
use the name style which has an initial of the ﬁrst nameand all letters of the last name.
•All teachers became to think that the bibliographic information is beautiful by the improvement.

108

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Fig. 4: Adding or Deleting Teachers

Table 1: A bibliographic information
Name of item

Contents

Paper title
Author 1
Author 2
JournalStarting pageEnd pageYear of publishing
Month of publishing

Example of Title
Tetsuya OISHINoriko Kuwano
Example of Journal
51
58
2015
7

3.4 Adding or Deleting Teachers
In our university, while many teachers joined our university, many other teachers transferred the other university. Of
course, while the former has to use the system, the latter has
to become not to use the system. We also manage personal
information per month.
Before improvement of the system, adding teachers wasvery troublesome work. We obtained the list of the teachers
who belonged to our university. We compared the teachers
who were included in the list with the teachers who werealready registered in the system. While we deleted theteacher who were already registered in the system and who

were not included in the list, we added the teacher who were
not registered in the system and who were included in thelist. We had to select the teachers to delete or add by using
a relational database management system. We had to havelong hours to do it.
Then we improved the system to delete or add teachers
automatically. First, we insert the list of the teachers, who
belonged to our university, into the system. The list that isinserted into the system now is compared with the list thatwas inserted into the system last month. In short, it meansthat the system became to be able to automatically do thetask we did manually. We have to have only a half hour to
do it. Actually, after shortening the time to do the task that
we add teachers, we can provide the account of the teacher
immediately.

4. Comparison of before and after improvement
As mentioned above, we have improved many functions.
In this section, we compare before and after improvement.

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4.1 Before Improvement
We had to deal with many complaints before improvement. We show the examples of complaints.
• The teachers who make many business trips would
like to use the system from the destination. But they
couldn’t do it before improvement.
• There are too much items to be able to insert into thesystem. Especially, it is troublesome work to enter the
information of papers.
• It is convenient to search authors from teachers in our
university, but it is inconvenient not to write the authors’name freely.
• The teachers, who work in our university newly, would
like to use the system immediately.
We had many trouble to solve, but we have already improved
these functions as mentioned in Section 3.

4.2 After Improvement
As we have solved many problems, there become tobe almost no complaints. Moreover, the duty to manage
teachers’ information is simpliﬁed. We think that almost all
major problems are solved.

5. Summary
We have improved many functions in the Researcher
Database System. Of course, there are minor improvements
which we don’t mention unfortunately. Until now, the system
was in the developing phase. From now on, we have tooperate the system certainly.
Then, we decided to replace the system with new one (Fig.
5). Actually, the machine, in which the system is working,is very old. Moreover, the system was created by patching
many functions. Now, all functions are ﬁxed.

The most important merit of replacing the system isthat all teachers can use the system comfortably. Then allteachers can make their educational and research information
public more easily. In 2016, the system will have replaced.
We will make efforts to replace the system.

References[1] Masao Mori, Toshie Tanaka, and Sachio Hirokawa, “A Document Authoring System for Credible Enterprise Reporting with Data Analysis
from Data Warehouse”, SEMAPRO 2010, The Fourth International
Conference on Advances in Semantic Processing, Oct. 2010.
[2] Kensuke Baba, Masao Mori, and Eisuke Ito, “A Synergistic System
of Institutional Repository and Researcher Database”, Proceedings of
The Second International Conference on Advanced Service Computing,Nov. 2011.
[3] Masao Mori, Toshie Tanaka, and Sachio Hirokawa, “A Progressive
Data Warehouse of Institutional Research with Web API and Mashup
Visualization”, Third International Conference on Computer Supported
Education, Sep. 2011.
[4] Masao Mori, Toshie Tanaka, and Kensuke Baba, “Connecting an
Institutional Repository with a Researcher Database”, International
Conference on Advanced Applied Informatics - IRIM, Sep. 2012.
[5] Academic Staff Educational and Research Activities Database. [Online]. Available: http://hyoka.ofc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/search/index_e.html[6] For Simple & Safety Information Systems, Single Sign-On Web Portal.
[Online]. http://web.sso.kyushu-u.ac.jp/English