University Information System RUSSIA
_{http://uisrussia.msu.ru}

The University Information System RUSSIA (UIS RUSSIA) is a mutual project of Research Computing Center and Economic Faculty at Lomonosov Moscow State University. It was introduced in 2000 and has been designed as a digital library for research and educational purposes, primarily in the fields of economic and social sciences. Since then it was maintained to meet the growing interest and challenges of the Russian universities and educational community.

Starting from 2003 our development team concentrated on statistical databases to build an infrastructure for educational courses, to assist broad Russian social and economic studies from regional to local and down to household level. Today profound knowledge of statistical data and ability to implement advanced modern methods of applied analysis are expected from successful university graduates and are in high demand among new specialists, particularly in economics, public administration and related areas.

To meet this demand we maintain and regularly update the set of databases. New data is added to the “Regions of Russia” segment on the annual and monthly basis directly from publications of the Russian Federal Statistic Service (Rosstat), the “Municipalities” are covered by annual updates. Profound data processing is required to cover broad variety of indicators. Based on the system of subject headings they are integrated and aggregated from numerous Rosstat publications. Overall our databases cover 83 Russian regions and twenty thousand municipal units. Current version of the “Regions of Russia” database provides up to 1500 indicators dated back to 2000. “Municipalities” database covers 800 indicators starting from 2006. Various aggregate tables can be composed for dynamic analysis. Each table provides references to the Rosstat data collection methodology, statistical forms and filling instructions.

Visualization options include business graphics tools and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) instruments. The latter ones help to vividly illustrate social, economic, ecological typology of the Russian regions.

Advanced statistical tools are available to enhance educational value of the system. Users can easily perform calculations of correlation factors, linear regression, extrapolation, secondary variables for static and time series, adjust criterion selection without any third party utilities. These tools can be easily adapted to on-line classes in statistics and quantitative methods of data analysis.

Enhanced database functionality includes the instruments to search and retrieve analytical publications available in the vast, full text document collections of the System. Those include reports from the Russian Federal Statistic Service, Ministries of Finances, Economic Development, State Treasury and other federal agencies, analytical journals and various research publications.

“Public administration” domain ontology-based cross-search tools are currently under development. The core of the ontology is statistical indicators corpora, which provides integrated indicators/publications information retrieval and query refinement.

“Children of Russia” subset of the regional data is focused on monitoring and comparing annual aggregates covering population ages 0-18.

Statistical databases are complimented by the UIS RUSSIA “Integrated Collection” publications covering vast social domains. Currently up to four million documents from over a hundred collections are integrated together. The Collection provides a wide retrospective coverage and is regularly updated. Contents include official data and documents from legislative, executive and judicial branches (laws, presidential decrees and directives, executive branch enactments, acts and regulations); international agreements signed by the Russian Federation; transcripts (daily stenograms) of the State Duma; reports from the Russian Federal agencies; analytical journals and publications of the major policy research institutes (“think tanks”); documents from the various international organizations and foreign universities. All of these are obtained from original official information owners and/or producers under legal agreements with Research Computing Center at the Moscow State University. The NLP technology for front end automatic text processing and Thesaurus-based thematic analysis was designed and implemented as part of the UIS RUSSIA project. It includes fully automated event categorization, indexing and annotation/summarization to provide subsequent efficient cross collections text search and query refinement.

Users

Access to the UIS RUSSIA is free for educational and research community. User registration nevertheless is required. Currently over three hundred universities, graduate schools, colleges and other higher education institutions, public libraries from all over Russian Federation are registered as collective users. They have full unlimited access over the Internet and these subscriptions can be shared within organizations.

More than two thousand educators from universities and schools, specialists from various research institutions, Russian Academy of Sciences, employees of government agencies and elected officials from local administrations have also subscribed as individual users.

The UIS RUSSIA resources are available and can be used only and exclusively for educational and research purposes!

While free access to the system without registration is also possible, the scope of information and services are limited.

How to register

In order to register as a collective user, a head of organization (university rector, dean of a faculty, public library director, etc.) must submit an official letter of application requesting access to the UIS RUSSIA. It must explicitly state exclusive non-commercial use of resources and include the name of a designated contact person responsible for accessing UIS RUSSIA. Upon receiving of the application our representative will contacts this designated person to set up the access credentials and resolve any possible technical matters (validation of IP-addresses, etc.) A designated contact person provides for registration forms for individual access to her/his institution’s educators, researchers, post-graduate students and students.

An individual access to specialists from various research institutions, Russian Academy of Sciences, employees of government agencies and elected officials from local administrations is provided upon submitting a registration form sent to the uiswebmaster@srcc.msu.ru. A registration form is provided upon request. The webmaster will then respond with a user login (usually an email address) and an randomly generated password.

Under the terms of application each individual subscriber or designated contact assumes full responsibility to comply with the following rules:

• to use the UIS RUSSIA resources only for personal education and/or research;
• to use login and password only for individual access and not to share with or pass it to any other person(s), unless otherwise specified by the terms of collective use;
• to follow strict rules of citation, i.e. to make references to an original publication author, title, publisher and UIS RUSSIA as an electronic provider of the document or statistical data quoted or downloaded. Some references examples

Privacy policy

Subscription application may contain some personal data and user affiliation. This information is required to assure that an applicant meets basic requirements predefined by the non-commercial status of the UIS RUSSIA and its primary purpose as collective electronic resource for education and social studies. The System integrates information from over a hundred holdings. It is provided for free by original owners under explicit conditions of non-commercial use only.

The following is required — first and last name, patronymic, institutional affiliation and position, email. Each user must provide this information either directly or via representative designated by his/her organization granting the UIS RUSSIA manager permission to check and validate it.

We also keep the log of resources accessed by the user, time and length of access, queries submitted and use of visualization, analytical and statistical tools. In accordance with the Federal Law on Personal data N 152-FZ of July 27, 2006 all collected personal information represents a special category of data and will not be disseminated, published or provided to any third party(is) except when otherwise specified by the federal laws.

We reserve the right to use this information for internal analysis. This will help us to:

• manage user registration type (DEFAULT or FREE);
• improve our understanding of users’ needs;
• determine the most popular collections, services and commonly used tools;
• define future strategy for development;
• compare activity of collective users.

All of the above is based on aggregate data and does not reveal any personal information of individual users.

Designated representative must also agree that his/her first and last name, patronymic, institutional affiliation and position will be disclosed in a list of designated representatives on the UIS RUSSIA website.

We greatly appreciate any comments and suggestions you may have. Please don’t hesitate to contact us at uiswebmaster@srcc.msu.ru.