The public CV database of Argentine researchers and the 'CV-minimum' Latin-American model of standardization of CV information for R&D evaluation and policy-making.

This paper discusses the conceptual and methodological design and objectives of the Standardized and Unified CV Database of the Argentine Scientific and Technological Human Resources (the CVar database) project. This is a public electronic database of researchers' CVs developed by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation in Argentina. The paper also addresses the main potential uses of this source of information (complementary to more traditional sources of data such as bibliometrics or patent analysis) for research evaluation, understanding the dynamics of career trajectories, policy-making and network studies. The Argentine case has some defining characteristics which make it different from other Latin-American experiences: the political perspective of the national government on the project, the inclusion of the main S&T institutions of the country in its design as a strategy to encourage its further adoption for the academic and scientific community, and the implementation of a specific database design strictly directed to the exploitation of the information and the creation of new indicators (database design used as the 'basic core' of a standardized template of a Latin-American CV, from which it will be possible to integrate information coming from different electronic CV databases in the region). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]