Research performance analytics involves the analysis and interpretation of corporate and sector-wide data on ECU’s research performance to inform strategic planning, institutional benchmarking, and University-wide performance evaluation. Analyses of University research performance can occur at the whole-of-University, School, Strategic Research Institute, Strategic Research Centre, or disciplinary level. Analyses may draw on a range of data and metrics including internally sourced data on research income, research grants, HDR completions, and research outputs (see Research Performance Reporting), as well as data sourced externally from citation databases on research outputs, citations, and external collaboration.
Citation databases, including Scopus and Web of Science, index publication and citation data for peer-reviewed literature, including journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters and books. These databases enable users to search for documents, authors, or organisations, and can be used to perform research output, collaboration (co-authorship) and citation analyses.
The citation databases above, as well as the SciVal research performance assessment tool described below, are all available via the Library’s list of A-Z Databases.
SciVal is a research performance assessment tool provided by Elsevier that draws on the publication and citation data from Scopus. SciVal enables publication, citation, and trend analyses, as well as benchmarking and collaboration evaluations. Analyses can be performed from the level of individual researchers through to the institutional and national level.
The ECU Institutional Hierarchy in SciVal enables ECU users to create citations-based analyses at the level of ECU Schools, Strategic Research Institutes and Strategic Research Centres. The hierarchy is accessible under Groups of Researchers in either the Entity list in the Explore analysis section or in the Benchmark - All metrics and Collaboration matrix subsections within the Compare analysis section. It can be used to gather data, benchmark performance and/or generate reports for ECU organisational units based on the staff affiliated with the given unit.
School-based Research Centres/Groups are not included in the ECU Institutional Hierarchy in SciVal. However, Research Services have developed a guide that provides instructions on how you can create your own Researcher Groups in SciVal. Users can then use the same functionality, as available for those organisational units defined in the hierarchy, to benchmark performance and generate reports for your Researcher Group(s).
Listed below are a number of research performance analytics scenarios and the potential data sources that could be used to support these analyses.
The Benchmark – All metrics subsection within the Compare analysis section in SciVal enables ECU to be benchmarked against Australia, the World and groups of countries such as APEC and G20, using a range of publication-based data, including citation-based and collaboration metrics.
The Benchmark – All metrics subsection within the Compare analysis section in SciVal can be used to measure ECU performance across a range of citation-based and collaboration metrics against Australian and/or overseas institutions.
The ERA Time Series Report presents data from ERA-2010, ERA-2012, ERA-2015 and ERA-2018. Each discipline-level report compares ECU submission data against Australian averages in all of the four ERA rounds for research income and research outputs.
The Benchmark – All metrics subsection within the Compare analysis section in SciVal can be used to measure ECU performance against national and international institutions at the two-digit and four-digit FoR level.
The Benchmark – All metrics subsection within the Compare analysis section in SciVal can be used to benchmark performance of individual researchers as well as Schools, Strategic Research Institutes and Strategic Research Centres, across a range of publication-based, citation-based and collaboration metrics. The Explore analysis section in SciVal can also be used to capture publications, citations, and collaboration data for individual researchers, as well as Schools, and ECU Strategic Research Institutes and Research Centres.
ECU SciVal users can also create their own Researcher Groups in order to perform analyses on School-based Research Centres or Groups.
For assistance with research performance data analytics, contact:
Research Performance Data Analyst
Gordon McIntyre
Telephone: (61 8) 6304 5707
Email: g.mcintyre@ecu.edu.au
For assistance with the use of citation databases, contact:
Scholarly Communication Team
Telephone: (61 8) 6304 5525
Email: researchonline@ecu.edu.au
For any queries associated with the ECU Analytics Portal, contact analytics@ecu.edu.au.