They’re Doing WHAT? COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Linda GallowayCustomer Consultant, Elsevier | Research Intelligence

Karen WalkerResearch Development, Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development, Arizona State University

Jamie WelchResearch Development, Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development, Arizona State University

Advancing Research, Entrepreneurship and Economic Development

What are we going to cover?• What is Competitive Intelligence?• Nature of CI in Higher Ed• Using SciVal for CI• SciVal Use Case – Collaboration• SciVal Use Case – Competitiveness• Wrap up/Questions

What is Competitive Intelligence?• CI is the ethical collection and analysis of

information which informs decision-making

• Development of actionable insights for decision making

• Quantitative and qualitative data

Nature of CI in Higher EducationFunding landscape is very competitive• CI helps you gain a competitive edge by:

oAssessing your strengths/weaknesses oBenchmarking against other

institutionsoDetermining top performers in

research fieldsoUnderstanding sponsor needs and

priorities

Nature of CI in Higher Ed• Types of Analyses

– Program Analyses– Sponsor Priorities/Strategies– Capacity Analyses– Landscape Analyses (research area/funding area)

Nature of CI in Higher Ed• These analyses provide us with a better viewpoint of our

institutions and competitors/collaborators and resources.• Multiple end-users who find various uses for intelligence

Institutional Decision Makers

Faculty Network

Using SciVal for Competitive Intelligence

SciVal is an analytical tool that allows you to:

• Characterize research portfolio for any profiled Academic/Corporate/Government entity• Benchmark performance against any set of peers• Find top performers/rising stars in research fields• Aid in research planning and analysis:

• Pinpoint the research areas where your institution excels• Find out which areas your peers and competitors are active in• Identify research topics that are likely to be well funded

The Layers of SciVal

Big Data technology

Publication, citation and Scopus usage dataawarded grants, mass media mentions, patent-article citations

10,000 research institutions and 230 countries

worldwide

Query around 200 trillion metric values

5000+Publishers

Scopus delivers a comprehensive view on the world of research.No packages, no add-ons. One all-inclusive subscription.

23,500+Serial titles

150,000+Books

74 million

Items

16 million

Author profiles

~70,000Affiliation Profiles

1.4 billion cited referencesdating back to 1970

Identify and analyze which journals to read/submit to

Help researchers manage career-citation counts and h-index

Decide what, where and withwhom to collaborateTrack impact of research;monitor global research trends

Find out what already exists inthe global world of research

Determine how to differentiateresearch topics, find ideas

Scopus is the largest curated abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature

and features smart tools that allow you to track, analyze and visualize scholarly research.

SciVal’s publication data source:

Predictive Analytics: Topic Prominence

• Reveal areas of current research focus• Tell the story of your groups’ research

attention• Highlight areas of significant research

contribution• Find collaborators, competitors, conduct

intelligence• Predict research areas likely to receive future

funding

How Topics were developed

• All Scopus publications are clustered into topics using citation links

• ~35 million publications (1996-present) in ~96,000 topics

• Clustering is done using algorithms that• Divide the documents into groups• Have a resolution parameter where increasing the resolution

increases the number of clusters and reduces cluster sizes• Maximize the links within clusters and minimize the links

between clusters

AN O

B CD

E F GH I

J

K L M

S TP Q R

U VW

ZX Y

Cluster 1 Cluster 2 Cluster 3

Prominence Metric• Prominence is the indicator that

shows the current momentum of a topic by looking at very recent citations, views and CiteScorevalues.

• Prominence = momentum (not the same as importance!).

• Prominence predicts funding –helps researchers and research managers identify topics in which funding will increase.

Between 2013 to >2018, researchers at Arizona State University have contributed to:10,668 Topics1,290 Topic Clusters

Topics: a detailed look at your institution's research strengths

ASU’s top 1% of Research Topics

ASU’s 1% Key Topics – globally most prominent

ASU - Key Contributor to this topic - #1 US Institution

Compare your research strengths to others

SciVal at Arizona State University

SciVal Use Case - Collaboration• What is ASU’s activity in China?• Awards Data + SciVal

– Great collaboration is not always funded research but can lead to funding. • Highlights up-and-comer faculty who may have not won an award yet

– Things aren’t always captured in awards• They are fields/early stage work that doesn’t necessarily get funded

easily by the typical sponsors we look at.

• Used SciVal to explore publications– From this we know who are our collaborators, who is most

common collaborator, and on what topics

SciVal Use Case - Collaboration

SciVal Use Case - Collaboration

SciVal Use Case - Collaboration

SciVal Use Case - Collaboration

SciVal Use Case - Collaboration

SciVal Use Case - Collaboration

SciVal Use Case - Collaboration

SciVal Use Case - Collaboration

SciVal Use Case - Competitiveness• Using SciVal Trends to see where your university ranks in a

particular topic.

• Where does ASU rank in artificial intelligence?• Used SciVal to look at publications in the field from 2013-

2018.– Limit to US academic institutions to narrow to our closest

competitors for funding resources

• Cross-compare with awards (in this case, HERD rankings) for a complete picture

SciVal Use Case - Competitiveness

SciVal Use Case - Competitiveness

SciVal Use Case - Competitiveness

SciVal Use Case - Competitiveness

SciVal Use Case - Competitiveness

Wrap Up• Reach out to SciVal rep at your institution for demo• Think through how this tool can answer questions posed by

leadership and faculty• Join the Competitive Intelligence Working Group!!

They’re Doing What? COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Thank You

l.galloway@elsevier.comKaren.Walker@asu.eduJWELCH11@ASU.EDU

Questions?