"Lately, an increasing number of countries have set up national bibliographic databases, which
aim to achieve more comprehensive coverage of the national research outputs. These databases
both increase the visibility of national publications and compensate the limited coverage of
traditional citation databases, such as Scopus or Web of Science. National bibliographic
databases are being increasingly used by a wide variety of stakeholders for numerous purposes,
ranging from basic information retrieval and research outputs overview to bibliometric analysis,
evaluation and research funding.
The Republic of Moldova set up its national bibliographic database – National Bibliometric
Instrument (IBN) in 2011. Nowadays, IBN includes over 113.000 articles published in national
scientific journals, as well as conference proceedings from the Republic of Moldova starting from
1993 to date, with over 90% of publications indexed by Google Academic. IBN is used for the
evaluation of national scientific journals and provides valuable insights on the overall evolution
and trends of national research outputs, but is not being used for research funding.
This paper aims to describe the history, actual structure and user possibilities of IBN. It also aims
to analyse IBN design, organisation, maintenance and usage from the perspective of the Manual of
good practices regarding national bibliographic databases, developed in the context of the
‘European Network for Research Evaluation in the Social Sciences and Humanities’ ENRESSH.
Finally, the paper intends to provide a set of recommendations for IBN reengineering and
improvement"