Topic Prominence in Science

We are expanding SciVal from being a purely evaluative and analytical tool to being an integral part of your research planning process. Topic Prominence in Science will revolutionize the way in which you develop your research strategy by giving you and your colleagues unique insight into identifying new, emerging research trends.

Elsevier Connect >> The dawn of predictive analytics to measure research performance: SciVal’s Topic Prominence

You are now able to run a complete portfolio analysis to see which Topics your institution is currently active in, and which Topics have high momentum, those therefore more likely to be well-funded. It will provide insight into which researchers are active in those Topics, which Topics your peers and competitors are active in and the related Topics of which you should be aware.

Topics are ranked by Prominence, an indicator of the momentum of a particular field.

The development of Topic Prominence in Science is based upon extensive research and customer feedback. Unlike other research analytics solutions, which merely scratch the surface by only analyzing top-cited articles, we take the entire world of research into account. Our ground-breaking, new technology takes into consideration 95% of the articles available in ScopusTM and clusters them into nearly 96,000 global, unique research topics based on citation patterns.

Find out more: Register for upcoming webinars

As part of the this exciting new enhancement, we will offer several webinars to help you make the most of Topic Prominence in Science, and answer any questions which you might have.

WEBINAR 1: Introduction to Topic Prominence in Science :: An overview of Topic Prominence in Science, a brief explanation of the underlying methodology, the main uses and a live demonstration of the new functionality.

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WEBINAR 2: Advanced applications of Topic Prominence in Science :: Once you have familiarized yourself with this exciting new feature, we will show you how to get the most out of Topic Prominence in Science and utilize it in the development and execution of your research strategy. We will also provide a thorough walk-thru and in-depth explanation of the methodology.

WEBINAR Asia Pacific & Europe:

November 30 (Thurs), 08:00 - 09:00 CET

Register

London 07:00
Amsterdam 08:00
Singapore 15:00
Sydney 18:00

WEBINAR Europe & Americas:

November 30 (Thurs), 16:00 - 17:00 CET

Register

London 15:00
Amsterdam 16:00
NY 10:00
San Francisco 07:00

How can I use Topic Prominence in Science?

For research managers, who are trying to stay abreast of the latest research trends, Topic Prominence in Science can  help answer the following:

  • What are the pockets of well-funded research in our current research portfolio?
  • Who are the top performing researchers and upcoming talent active in those particular research Topics?
  • How can we show that our institution is particularly active and leading the way in a research field, which has a lot of momentum?
  • Which forward-momentum Topics are our peers and competitors currently active in?

As a researcher, Topic Prominence in Science provides you with a much clearer picture of your overall research performance, and insight into the momentum or level of activity of particular Topics. We can help you answer your most pressing research related questions:

  • Which are the Topics with high momentum, that are likely to be well-funded and thus have higher grant success rates?
  • Who else is active and publishing research in a similar Topic to mine, whom I could partner and co-author with?
  • What are some related Topics adjacent to mine with a lot of momentum, where I could focus my research attention?

Fig 1. The Topic Prominence in Science wheel provides a clear and simple overview of the Topics in which your institution is the most active.

Fig 2. Each Topic is uniquely labeled with a ‘T’ number which describes a particular research area. You are able to sort it by Scholarly Output, publication share and see the overall World Prominence of a particular Topic.


Replacing  Competencies

Topic Prominence in Science will be replacing Competencies. The new methodology has been based upon the customer feedback, from current Competencies users. Unlike Competencies, Topics are:

  • Global. Topics allow for direct comparison of institutions and countries
  • Stable. Topics are based upon clustering 95% of Scopus articles (1996-2016), therefore Topics can grow over time and can split into new Topics, but will never disappear.
  • Supports trend detection.  Your analysis is no longer based upon a rolling five-year window, but now dates back to 1996

Your existing Research Areas which have been created based on the Competencies will still be available, however the underlying data will not be updated.

Should you have any questions regarding the replacement of Competencies and what it means for you, please don't hesitate to reach out to your sales representative, or contact our support team via email.

Contact us


Topic Prominence Roadmap*

Topic Prominence in Science was released on Tuesday 3 October, with further improvements and developments in future iterations. To give you a taste of what is to come, outlined below are some of the Roadmap items, which we will be working on:

Later this year

  • Now LIVE! Export the 500 most prolific Topics via excel/csv
  • Filter Topics by ASJC subject classification in the Overview module
  • See most prominent Topics globally

Early 2018:

  • Get an overview of the related Topics in the Trends module
  • Define new research areas based on Topics
  • We will be supporting the needs of individual Researchers to see which Topics they are the most active in, and who else is active in these Topics for potential collaboration
  • You will be able to analyze Topics for Groups of Researchers, Groups of Institutions and Publication Sets
  • Analyze any institution’s performance to see overlapping activity
  • Higher aggregation levels – we will be introducing groupings of related Topics to help browsing and discovery and aiding higher level analysis

*As with all Roadmaps it is an outline of future plans, and thus features and timings may change.


Methodology & Further Reading

The creation of Topic Prominence in Science is based upon years of in-depth research and extensive customer feedback and testing SciVal’s product, UX and development teams.

Due to recent advances and improvements in quality of the underlying data, the development of better algorithms to cluster scientific papers and greater computing technology, we have now created a model which is much more accurate, and allows us to analyze all Scopus data at the same time.

What is a Topic?

A Topic is a collection of documents with a common intellectual interest and can be large or small, new or old, growing or declining. Over time, new Topics will surface, and as Topics are dynamic they will evolve. As with the nature of today’s research landscape many Topics are multidisciplinary, and old Topics may be dormant but they still exist. In addition, researchers themselves are mobile, and work in various different research areas, and thereby contribute to multiple Topics.

What is Prominence?

Calculating a Topic’s Prominence combines 3 metrics to indicate the momentum of the Topic:

  • Citation Count in year n to papers published in n and n-1
  • Scopus Views Count in year n to papers published in n and n-1
  • Average CiteScore for year n

Scopus publications are clustered into Topics based upon a direct citation analysis. As illustrated in the images below, where there is a weak citation link, there is a break and a new Topic is formed.

How does Prominence relate to funding?

There is a correlation between the prominence (momentum) of a particular Topic and the amount of funding per author within that topic. On average, the higher the momentum, the more money per author is available for research on that Topic.

Prominence is a proxy for funding, which analyzes past funding patterns to predict future funding opportunities.  The funding prediction is based upon U.S. funding data, primarily from the NIH and NSF, and the evaluation of 314,000 individual grants (equivalent of approx. $US203 billion), and how it has been attributed to >91,000 Topics.

Fig 3. All Scopus publications are clustered into Topics using direct citation analysis (as opposed to co-citation analysis).

Fig. 4 The borders between clusters (Topics) are identified by looking at where the citation links are weak. Where the links are weak, the clusters are split into separate Topics.

Prominence does not signify 'Importance'

Due to the nature of certain research fields there are Topics which, will never become "Prominent", however this is not mutually exclusive with the Topic not being important. Prominence is an indicator of momentum/movement or visibility of a particular Topic.

Further Reading

For further information regarding the methodology, how Prominence is calculated and assigned and other FAQs please see the following papers and documents:

Topic Prominence in Science FAQ
Compiled by Martin Andersson, Kevin Boyack and Richard Klavans

Research Portfolio Analysis and Topic Prominence
Richard Klavans and Kevin W. Boyack

Identifying Emerging Topics in Science and Technology
Henry Small, Kevin W. Boyack and Richard Klavans

Which Type of Citation Analysis Generates the Most Accurate Taxonomy of Scientific and Technical Knowledge?
Richard Klavans and Kevin W. Boyack

A New Methodology for Constructing a Publication-Level Classification System of Science
Ludo Waltman and Nees Jan van Eck
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