Leveraging NC’s Knowledge Assets & Research Capacity

January 29, 2010Faculty Council

Problem Statements• Universities are incredibly large and

diverse hubs of knowledge and activity• Truly impossible to quantify the wealth of

knowledge and activities that exist on campuses

• Difficult to answer the question, “Who knows what?”

• Potential Missed Collaborative Opps

Problem Statements• Difficult to ‘market’ the University

because breadth of activity is large• Data can exist in silos or not at all• Large repositories of data can exist,

but not be leveraged

Traditional Answers• Keyword searches• Google• Reference Databases• Direct, firsthand knowledge• ‘Word of mouth’

The Initiative• Aggregate and leverage large

repositories of scholarly activity & research data

• Use taxonomical classification to create ‘digital fingerprint’ representations of expertise

• Create a ‘dashboard’ of powerful visualization tools to ‘tell the story’

The Initiative• “This has all been tried before and

failed. What is different about this project from those previous failed attempts?

The Partnership• UNC-Chapel Hill

– Office of Research Info Systems (ORIS)– NC Translational and Clinical Sciences

Institute (TraCS)– Renaissance Computing Institute

(RENCI)• NC State University• UNC General Administration

The Project• Phase 1 (funded)

– UNC-Chapel Hill– NC State University

• Phase 2 (to be funded)– Remainder of UNC-system Universities

• Phase 3 (theoretical)Duke, Wake Forest, etc

Sources of Data• Unique License with

Elsevier/Scopus• RAMSeS• Intellectual Property Data• Financial Expenditure Data• Google Scholar (Citations)• Others as identified

Sources of Data: Scopus• 18,000 journal titles/5,000 publishers

– 16,500 peer-reviewed journals– 600 trade publications– 350 book series– 3.6 million conference papers

• 38 million publication records• 23 million patent records

Sources of Data: Scopus Titles

• Agricultural & Biological Sciences (1155)• Arts & Humanities (775)• Biochemistry, Genetics & Molecular Biology (1373)• Business, Management & Accounting (458)• Chemical Engineering (486)• Chemistry (357)• Computer Science (622)• Decision Sciences (95)• Dentistry (85)• Earth and Planetary Sciences (522)• Economics, Econometrics and Finance (238)

Sources of Data: Scopus Titles

• Energy (220)• Engineering (622)• Environmental Science (1237)• Health Professions (94)• Immunology & Microbiology (294)• Materials Science (542)• Mathematics (509)• Medicine (7288)• Neuroscience (176)• Nursing (274)• Pharmacology, Toxicology & Pharmaceutics (485)

Sources of Data: Scopus Titles

• Physics & Astronomy (423)• Psychology (3129)• Social Sciences (1177)• Veterinary (96)

Sources of Data: RAMSeS• Research Proposals• Research Awards

Live Demonstrations• Digital Fingerprint• Geographical Activity Maps• Economic Impact Maps

Potential Benefits• Faculty/Student Recruitment• Research Capacity Promotion• Collaborative Proposal Development• ID Unique Opportunities• Media/Legislative inquiries• Community/Regional Economic

Development