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Inside the scientific data revolution

The global research landscape has always been hard to analyse and understand, even for those closest to it

23 May 2018
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What makes a research institute successful? That’s a question universities are increasingly puzzling over as they compete for student applications, research funding and coveted positions at the top of league rankings. To help answer it, many institutions are looking for relevant data to yield insights that will give them an edge over their competitors.

Just ask the team at University of Glasgow, who for the past two years have been using Scopus, an abstract and citation database, and its analytical tools to map out the landscape of research and innovation. Scopus has an impressive pedigree, being owned by Elsevier, an information analytics business specialising in science and health.

And the results at Glasgow have been significant. Not only can staff and students use the data to keep abreast of research fields – and their performance relative to peers within those fields – Scopus is also helping the university from a more strategic point of view to understand how it compares with other institutions, and when and where to seek out collaborations.

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A key benefit is how the data can help in applying for funding. “We put in a large bid recently, for medical research,” says Alice Gee, policy and business intelligence manager at the University of Glasgow. When writing the bid, Gee and her colleagues used Scopus data to demonstrate that they were the strongest recipients for the funding. “We were able to quote the number of papers published in the last five years, the percentages that were international and involved collaborations with industry, and our citation metrics,” she says.

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Scopus also allows institutions to analyse their standing and compare it with competitors. The team used this capability to show that, among the 24 Russell Group universities, the University of Glasgow scored third in terms of field-weighted citation impact and second for international collaborations in the specific research field.

Glasgow is just one of more than 4500 research institutions worldwide turning to Scopus to gain a clearer picture of the landscape in which they operate. Scopus allows users to discover peer-reviewed data, view publication profiles of individuals and institutions, and analyse research trends. The database currently holds over 70 million research articles, books and conference proceedings dating back to 1788.

“Scopus is based on the largest research database in the world, where publication sources are validated as relevant, useful and impactful by a panel of professionals in each field. It gives you a window on who’s doing what, and who’s doing the highest-quality research,” says Lesley Thompson, vice president of academic and government relations at Elsevier. “You can check what’s being published and cited, and that gives you a good view of where research is moving.”

Data-driven funding decisions

And it’s not just universities that stand to benefit. Governments can better understand the value of their investment in science, funding bodies can more easily study the landscape of research and individual scientists can see how they sit within it.

“If you’re a researcher, you might use it to work out who you should collaborate with, how your papers are doing in terms of impact, and compare that with peer researchers,” says Thompson, who works with both universities and government bodies to assess how bibliometric data analyses can inform policy and decision-making at the highest level. “From a government’s perspective, it’s hugely useful to understand how your country is performing compared to other countries.”

That kind of analysis can have a massive impact on government science funding. “You might have heard ministers say that the UK has one per cent of the [world’s] population, spends 2.7 per cent of global R&D [outlay], and achieves 16 per cent of highly cited papers – that analysis comes from insights available within Scopus,” says Thompson.

These data points come from a report published by the UK government called International Comparative Performance of the UK Research Base 2013. Every two years since 2011, the government’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has worked with Elsevier to analyse Scopus data and identify trends. “These reports are gold dust to organisations defending and pushing for investment in science,” she says. They can also look at gender balance in research fields and by country.

“Also based on Scopus data, last year Elsevier produced the first global analysis of the gender divide in academia in a whole set of different disciplines and geographies,” says Thompson. “It’s been incredibly helpful to research funders to understand what’s happening in their country.”

“It gives us significant insight into how well the university is performing”

Scopus data is also used by Times Higher Education (THE) to compile the annual World University Rankings – a league table of 1000 top global universities that confers prestige on the highest performers and shapes international research collaboration and government policy. Several countries favour immigrants who are graduates of top-scoring universities, for example.

The THE rankings score universities on teaching environment, research, citations, international outlook and industry income.

A key driver of THE’s 2014 decision to partner with Elsevier was the global coverage and transparent structure of Scopus data, which enabled THE to analyse more research activity and institutions than ever before – including those in emerging economies where research outputs are rising rapidly. As Trevor Barratt, managing director of THE, explains, “Four years ago, THE’s World University Rankings had 400 universities ranked; we now have 1100. With Elsevier’s help, we have a much more global view.”

And because this information is accessible to subscribers, universities can use it to get an idea of their standing before the rankings are released. “It gives significant insight into how well the University of Glasgow is performing,” says Gee. “That’s important for prestige and for getting new students.”

For the university, it means having the management information it needs to help maintain its ranking in the top 100 since 2014.

The team also uses Scopus to check staff members are linked to all the publications they have been involved in and that none are missed when the rankings are compiled. “We make sure research is credited to Glasgow as much as possible,” says William Nixon, assistant director, digital strategy, at the University of Glasgow Library.

In the same way, individual researchers can track their field and their own performance. Scopus currently holds author profiles for over 16 million individuals. By listing a person’s output, collaborations, grants and citations, it provides an overview of their standing in their field. “That may be information that individuals want to support performance reviews,” says Nixon.

He, Gee and their colleagues are also using Scopus to help shape the future of the University of Glasgow. “We can look at grant applications and see where we have been successful and where we have not, what research is being undertaken, and see publication metrics to benchmark ourselves against other universities,” says Gee. “We can see where we have strengths and weaknesses. It’s a powerful tool.”

More at: elsevier.com/scopus

This article appeared in print under the headline “Inside the scientific data revolution”
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