At a glance
Institution: Universitas Hasanuddin (UNHAS), Makassar, Indonesia — a leading public research university.
Deployment: Discover RIMS in production, public portal at discover.unhas.ac.id.
Scope: 2,500+ researcher profiles, 15,300+ publications, 18 faculties and research units, collaboration across dozens of partner countries.
Sources reconciled: Scopus, OpenAlex, ORCID, Crossref, Scimago.
Status: Live, used daily by researchers and administrators.
The starting point
Like many research universities outside the traditional centres of higher-education infrastructure spending, UNHAS faced a familiar problem: a research portfolio outgrowing the spreadsheets, departmental tools, and ad-hoc reporting processes that had previously sustained it. Each ranking submission, each accreditation cycle, each strategic planning exercise drew on the same underlying data — and assembling it consistently each time consumed weeks of effort from research office staff. The institution had outgrown the systems that had served it through earlier phases of growth, but the legacy enterprise RIMS market was priced for a different tier of institution.
Why a modern alternative
UNHAS evaluated the available options against four criteria: data coverage across the global scholarly record (not just Scopus); deployment time measured in months rather than the 12–18 month implementations typical of legacy enterprise platforms; total cost aligned to the institution's actual budget rather than the budgets the incumbent vendors design for; and modern stack and data residency options appropriate for a global research university operating outside Europe and North America. Our platform met those criteria; the legacy alternatives did not.
What "in production" actually means here
The numbers describe the scale: 2,500+ researcher profiles, 15,300+ publications, 18 faculties and research units, collaboration mapped across dozens of partner countries with concentrations in Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The leading researcher's h-index — Professor Firzan Nainu, h-index 47 — is captured accurately across sources, with publications correctly attributed regardless of which name variant they appeared under. The Rector — Professor Jamaluddin Jompa (2026–2030 term), himself a featured researcher with h-index 36 — uses the same system as researchers and administrators across the institution. Every dashboard, every ranking submission, every accreditation report now draws from the same continuously reconciled dataset.
The reconciliation discipline
The visible output — clean researcher profiles, accurate publication counts, working collaboration maps — is the easy part to describe. The harder, less visible work was the initial reconciliation: matching outputs against the institutional record across multiple global sources, resolving author ambiguity via ORCID and Scopus Author ID, deduplicating across overlapping coverage, normalising affiliations to handle "Universitas Hasanuddin" / "Hasanuddin University" / abbreviated variants. We have written about why this matters in Building a Single Source of Truth for Research Data and the techniques in How a RIMS ingests data from five global sources. UNHAS is the proof that the approach works in production.
What changed for the institution
Three changes matter most. Reporting cycles changed from projects to queries. The data assembly that used to consume weeks before each submission now produces a current view on demand. Research strategy became evidence-led. Leadership can ask "which faculties' international collaboration is growing fastest?" or "where is our open-access share concentrated?" and get an answer rather than a meeting. The researcher experience improved. Profiles are current without manual maintenance; outputs are attributed correctly; the public portal at discover.unhas.ac.id showcases the institution's research at a quality that is visible to international peers and ranking respondents.
A note on testimonial
The Rector's office has reviewed and approved this case study and supports the use of the institution's name and logo in our public materials. UNHAS is shared here as a working reference deployment — institutions interested in a reference call can request one through our team.
Lessons that generalise
UNHAS's experience offers three lessons for institutions evaluating a similar move:
- Data reconciliation is harder than vendor selection. The platform matters, but the initial coverage and identifier reconciliation work determines whether the platform produces value. Plan for it explicitly.
- Multi-source ingestion is non-negotiable for institutions whose output includes regional, open-access, and non-English work. Coverage shaped only by Scopus systematically understates them — the argument in OpenAlex vs Scopus coverage.
- Continuous beats periodic. Once the system synchronises automatically, every internal request and external submission becomes a query, not a project — the operational shift behind cutting research reporting time.
What this enables next
The same reconciled foundation now supports several institutional priorities: ranking submissions across QS, THE, and ARWU built on a defensible dataset (covered in our ranking submissions article); CoARA-aligned assessment posture where output diversity and contextual evidence sit alongside metrics; journal and researcher metrics computed on a clean record. None of these capabilities required new infrastructure — they were unlocked by getting the data foundation right.
Frequently asked questions
Is UNHAS the only institution running Discover RIMS in production? UNHAS is our public reference deployment, with explicit institutional permission to use their name and logo. Other deployments and pilots are confidential per customer preference.
Can we see the actual UNHAS platform? Yes. UNHAS's public research portal at discover.unhas.ac.id is open, live, and showcases exactly the platform our product delivers — including researcher profiles, publication records, faculty dashboards, and collaboration maps.
How does deployment cost compare to legacy enterprise RIMS platforms? Our pricing model is designed for institutions priced out of the legacy enterprise market. Specific figures are discussed under NDA — request a quote via our contact form.
How long did the UNHAS deployment take? Production deployment was completed in months, not years — a deliberate contrast with traditional 12–18 month legacy RIMS implementations.
Can UNHAS staff speak to our institution about their experience? Reference calls can be arranged through us subject to UNHAS's availability. Contact our team to request one.
See it yourself
Visit discover.unhas.ac.id — UNHAS's public research portal — to see exactly the platform our product delivers. Then talk to our team about what a comparable deployment at your institution would look like.