Introduction to getLattes

Roney Fraga Souza

2020-06-12

The Lattes platform has been hosting curricula of Brazilian researchers since the late 1990s, containing more than 5 million curricula. The data from the Lattes curricula can be downloaded to XML format, the complexity of this reading process motivated the development of the getLattes package, which imports the information from the XML files to a list in the R software and then tabulates the Lattes data to a data.frame.

The main information contained in XML files, and imported via getLattes, are:

• Academics Papers Presentation getApresentacaoTrabalho
  
• Research Area getAreasAtuacao
  
• Published Papers getArtigosPublicados
  
• Profissional Links getAtuacoesProfissionais
  
• Ph.D. Examination Board’s getBancasDoutorado
  
• Undergraduate Examination Board’s getBancasGraduacao
  
• General Examination Board’s getBancasJulgadoras
  
• Master Examination Board’s getBancasMestrado
  
• Books Chapters getCapitulosLivros
  
• Short Duration Course getCursoCurtaDuracao
• General Data getDadosGerais
  
• Profissional Address getEnderecoProfissional
  
• Events and Congresses getEventosCongressos
  
• Profissional Formation getFormacao
  
• Languages getIdiomas
  
• Newspapers and Magazines getJornaisRevistas
  
• Research Lines getLinhaPesquisa
  
• Published Books getLivrosPublicados
  
• Event’s Organization getOrganizacaoEvento
• Academic Advisory (Ph.D. Thesis) getOrientacoesDoutorado
  
• Academic Advisory (Master Thesis) getOrientacoesMestrado
  
• Academic Advisory (Other) getOrientacoesOutras
  
• Academic Advisory (Post Doctorate) getOrientacoesPosDoutorado
  
• Other Bibliographic Productions getOutrasProducoesBibliograficas
  
• Other Technical Productions getOutrasProducoesTecnicas
  
• Participation in Projects getParticipacaoProjeto
  
• Preface getPrefacio
  
• Awards and Medals getPremiosTitulos
  
• Technical Production getProducaoTecnica
  
• TV and Radio Program getProgramaRadioTV
  
• Research Report getRelatorioPesquisa
  
• Works in Event getTrabalhosEventos

From the functionalities presented in this package, the main challenge to work with the Lattes curriculum data is now to download the data, as there are Captchas. To download a lot of curricula I suggest the use of Captchas Negated by Python reQuests - CNPQ. The second barrier to be overcome is the management and processing of a large volume of data, the whole Lattes platform in XML files totals over 200 GB. In this tutorial we will focus on the getLattes package features, being the reader responsible for download and manage the files.

Follow an example of how to search and download data from the Lattes website.