About us
What Sceiba is
Sceiba is an architecture and engineering consultancy specialized in technological infrastructure for scientific research. It is made up of members of the Centre for Resources for Learning and Research (CRAI) of the University of Pinar del Río "Hermanos Saíz Montes de Oca" (Cuba) and of specialists associated with the institution who have experience in scientific information systems.
Our team is multidisciplinary: information specialists, librarians, computer scientists, professors and researchers working in an integrated way. This composition allows us to approach the challenges of scientific knowledge management from three simultaneous angles: library and documentary practice, software engineering, and applied research.
We work with universities, research centres, libraries and scientific institutions to design and deploy open, interoperable and sustainable infrastructures. Our activity sits at the intersection of information technology and scientific knowledge management: we are scientific infrastructure engineers committed to knowledge sovereignty.
Track record
The library of the University of Pinar del Río has maintained a tradition spanning several decades in the use of information technologies applied to scientific knowledge. This trajectory began in the early nineties with the adoption of CDS/ISIS and WinISIS for catalogue automation, and has evolved continuously to the present day, marked by artificial intelligence, knowledge graphs and open science.
What makes this trajectory distinctive is its institutional continuity: despite the natural staff changes that have occurred over three decades, the CRAI has maintained a coherent line of work, passing on knowledge, methodologies and experience across generations of professionals. That accumulated heritage is the foundation on which Sceiba is built.
Sceiba takes up that heritage and projects it outwards: we turn decades of institutional practice into consulting services for other institutions facing similar challenges.
The problem we address
Scientific institutions face a fragmented technological ecosystem: platforms that do not communicate with each other, data isolated in silos, dependence on external providers, rising maintenance costs and difficulties in preserving and giving visibility to their scientific output.
Sceiba addresses this problem through architecture: by designing information systems that connect people, publications, projects, data and resources in a coherent, sovereign ecosystem governed by the institution itself.
Technological philosophy and commitment to Open Science
We believe in open infrastructure as a fundamental pillar for the transparency, reproducibility and technological sovereignty of scientific institutions. Our vision rests on five principles:
- Open Science by design: promotion of open standards, interoperability and free access to scientific production.
- Data sovereignty and control: guaranteeing that the institution maintains full control and portability of its knowledge assets.
- Native interoperability: adoption of global metadata schemes that connect institutions with the international scientific ecosystem.
- Technical sustainability: solutions based on free and open source software (FLOSS) that minimize recurring costs and avoid vendor lock-in.
- Evolutionary architecture: scalable designs ready to integrate with knowledge graph models and artificial intelligence.
Featured projects and collaborations
Throughout our trajectory we have taken part in the deployment and integration of multiple knowledge management systems at national and international scale:
- Scientific evaluation platform (MES): development and maintenance of the science evaluation system for the Ministry of Higher Education of Cuba.
- International cooperation: technical collaboration in development and information infrastructure projects with international programmes, including the Belgian VLIR-UOS programme.
- Open Source ecosystem: continuous development of open tools and components, accessible to the academic community through our organization at github.com/tocororo. There we publish and maintain our own configurations, integrations and developments on top of technologies such as Open Journal Systems (OJS), DSpace, DSpace-CRIS, InvenioRDM, Neo4j and other tools of the open scientific infrastructure ecosystem.
Who we work for
- Universities and academic consortia
- Research and innovation centres
- Academic and national libraries, and repositories
- Public bodies for scientific and technological management
- International cooperation programmes
Let's get to know each other
If your institution is looking to build open, interoperable and sustainable technological infrastructure for research, we would be delighted to talk.