You may have seen that Dimensions, the research funding and analysis tool from our partners at ÜberResearch, has had an increased presence in the public eye in recent weeks. Having passed a milestone in its database size, added a useful new integration, and provided data for EU research funding debates, we thought it a good time to shine the spotlight on this powerful tool.
If you haven’t seen it before, now is a great time to familiarise yourself with Dimensions – recently, the amount of total historic and current funding covered by its database passed the $1 trillion mark. Dimensions for Universities, the version designed for institutional use, combines Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Big Data analysis with sophisticated personal and institutional disambiguation techniques to allow an in-depth analysis of ongoing research funding. With this data, strategic decisions can be made by research administrators and directors about the allocation of resources and distribution of funding within their institution.
Altmetric Integration
Recently, this interoperability has become even more useful, with the integration of Altmetric attention score badges into Dimensions search results. This integration means that Altmetric badges and attention score now appear in publication search results within Dimensions, providing users with an immediate visual indicator of the type and volume of online attention surrounding individual research publications within the platform for the first time.
Users can click on the colourful badges to see full details of the online attention research items have received from sources such as the mainstream media, social and scholarly networks, blogs and Wikipedia, as well as a record of where studies have influenced public policy or been cited amongst academics. It’s an effective new method for understanding the broader engagement surrounding funded research. This feature is available for those who subscribe to both Dimensions and Altmetric Explorer for Institutions.
EU Funding
Dimensions has also been fuelling the conversation about research funding since the results of the EU Referendum.
In May 2016, ÜberResearch and Digital Science released a report entitled Examining Implications of Brexit for the UK Research Base, using Dimensions for funding data. Then, with a screenshot that was retweeted over 500 times, ÜberResearch revealed funding received by UK institutions from the European Union over the last ten years. With those funds in danger of disappearing, they will need to be obtained from elsewhere.
EU FUNDING RECEIVED BY UK UNIVERSITIES IN LAST 10 YEARS THAT MAY NEED TO BE FOUND ELSEWHERE IN THE FUTURE
We believe institutional leaders will now be more interested than ever in where their research funding is coming from, how it’s distributed, and what comparisons can be made between their own funding situation and other institutions.
If you’d like more information, or to arrange a demo of Dimensions, please contact us.
Altmetric, along with Symplectic and ÜberResearch, are a Digital Science company. More information is available on Altmetric’s website.