Innovative
Using data science to place research in its context!
Extensive
128 million grants, publications, clinical trials and patents with 4 billion connections
We use artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science to bring different types of data together to set research in context and enable serendipity.
References
4 billion extracted references and links show connections between content types and reveal research impact
Funders
Funding worth >$1.3 trillion and more than 40 million connections to grants and funders show where resources are going
Persons
20m researcher profiles worldwide capture the activity of authors, investigators and inventors
Sources
Source titles, preprint servers, patent offices and trial registries show where research has been published or registered
Institutions
>80k international institutions extracted, normalized, enriched and assigned more than 150M times
Categories
Machine learning based categorization for >80m records - 100% consistent across all content types
Concepts
1.5 bn connections based on extracted concepts connecting 128 million documents
publications 3.6M
grants 61M
Altmetric
data points 320k policy
documents 360k
clinical trials 34M
patents
Re-imagining discovery and access to research:
grants, publications, citations, clinical trials and patents in one place
Dimensions metrics API and Dimensions Badges - openly available
Citations and metrics are how we as a community assess and contextualize research. We use them to “value” efforts in pursuit of assigning adequate resources, illustrate successes, communicate the importance of research activities or provide ways to compare research objects against another - for good or for bad.
However, these metrics and underlying data have not always been accessible, living behind paywalled gates, away from to the broader community. With Dimensions, we do not believe that these restrictions are what’s best for the community.
To facilitate innovation and discovery, we are making the Dimensions metrics API and the Dimensions Badges openly available for non-commercial use.
More information on the open Dimensions Metrics API...
Open Dimensions Metrics API and Dimensions Badges
A Version of Dimensions for Everyone
With Dimensions, Digital Science introduces not only a new linked research information platform but also powerful tools to navigate the data - either within the user interface or via the powerful Dimensions API.
Dimensions currently offers three unique versions. Each has been carefully designed with functionality explicitly designed to support different groups within the research ecosystem while all as part of a consistent modular product platform.
Dimensions: free for researcher's personal use, access to 91 million+ publication metadata records and 918 million+ citations
Dimensions Plus: providing institutions and their researchers with a broader set of functionalities and data sources.
Dimensions Analytics: supporting funders and publishers with workflow support
Anywhere Access for Dimensions: an optional module for institutions to enable full-text articles access.
Dimensions versions serving specific needs
Do what you want with the data!
Dimensions has been built to allow the researchers to ‘take the data back’ - both for immediate research purposes and research management and assessment. This requires modern tools and APIs that offer as much flexibility as possible.
With the Dimensions API, we have developed a Dimensions-specific query language which allows for search, aggregate, and cluster in a single API call, providing cleanly structured data for the further analysis or a machine-machine interaction.
For more information on the API, please complete the attached form and we'll be in be in touch soon.
For a limited time, the Dimensions API will be included in our Dimensions Plus offering for universities and can be made available for individual researchers for personal research purposes.
Dimensions API
The research landscape has evolved dramatically over the past 10 years with new technologies, more data and increasingly diverse research ecosystems.
However, through these changes, the channels for discovery and ways impact is measured and assessed have remained static. Digital Science had a vision for a modern research system where data is democratized and the lens through which we measure research outputs broadened.
In collaboration with community partners, Digital Science invested the unique skills, technology and talent across its portfolio companies to make Dimensions a reality.
Dimensions is realized from a diverse team across the Digital Science Portfolio companies.
Learn more about Dimensions
More than 91 million publications and 920 million citations freely available for personal use
With millions of papers published each year - researchers struggle to not only find the research relevant to their work but also keep track of the research landscape in the process.
With more than 91 million publications and 920 million citations freely available for personal use, Dimensions provides students and researchers access to the data and information they need - with the lowest barriers possible.
The free version of Dimensions provides researchers with these three key elements:
- A data universe with 91M publication records and about 20 million researcher profiles
- Linked information: publications contextualised with grants, patents, clinical trials and more
- Powerful search functionality and metrics to identify trends
- Instant Access to over 14 million open access articles
The free Dimensions app
Our Data Universe, Enriched and Connected
Unlike existing tools, Dimensions brings together various research-related data sources (over 128 million pieces thus far) in a venue that is consistent and accessible to the community.
In addition to deep-indexing, the Dimensions team invests in enhancing existing data for increased searchability and identifying links between related pieces (nearly 4 billion connections so far).
Going far beyond traditional databases, Dimensions provides the community with a data discovery engine with both context and perspective.
Learn more in A guide to the Dimensions Data Approach...
Interlinked and more openly available data
Dimensions and our approach to metrics
One of the primary drivers to realize Dimensions was to provide a data-rich environment which allows for the development and dissemination of metrics - driven by and developed for the research community. We consider the initial set of metrics included in the first Dimensions release as just a starting point.
The Digital Science & Dimensions team is passionate about supporting discussion and efforts in bibliometrics and research management. We encourage the bibliometric research community to make use of the rich data set and platform to development of innovative approaches and metrics to assess the impact of research and the management of research in research organizations.
Interested in joining or in getting access to the Dimensions data for research purposes? Please reach out to us via this form.
Learn more about the metrics currently implemented in Dimensions here….
Dimensions and metrics
Interested in joining the Dimensions or Digital Science team? We are now hiring a Senior Marketing Manager and a Data Scientist! Please visit our Careers Page to view more about the role and see other current open positions.
Don't see an opportunity that meets your skills? Don't hesitate to reach out directly as well. It would not be the first time that a role has been created to welcome a new colleague! You can get in contact with us by completing the attached form.
Join the Dimensions team
With each company focused on a different pain point within the research cycle, and serving various stakeholders in the research ecosystem, these teams shared their true passion for innovation
and contribute their unique experiences, opinions, and values into Dimensions.
Meet the team... > more
Meet the team
Building Dimensions together
The vision to realize a modern research infrastructure like Dimensions has lived within Digital Science since its inception in 2009. As with all the initiatives from Digital Science, broad community involvement was an essential part of making this big idea into a scalable and robust reality.
Six Digital Science portfolio companies (Readcube, Altmetric, Figshare, Symplectic, DS Consultancy and ÜberResearch) decided to take on the new Dimensions project together in 2011.
It was clear that this undertaking would only be achieved through a collaboration of a talented and passionate team, a robust range of technologies and community partners involved each step of the way. Dimensions was designed to break down silos - not to develop from within them.
This level of innovation would require a village - and within weeks of reaching out to the community, we had over 100 development partners from universities and funders from around the globe.
The response was overwhelming and inspiring.
Our partners worked with the Dimensions team for 12 months, providing invaluable product input, examining diverse use cases, flagging friction points and most importantly keeping the Dimensions project grounded and focused on its core mission: to make research more accessible.
The Dimensions community and team
Innovation through collaboration
The development of Dimensions has been triggered by the feedback from clients and partners of the Digital Science portfolio companies.
As a result, Dimensions has been developed through a dynamic collaboration across Digital Science and six of its portfolio businesses (ReadCube, Altmetric, Figshare, Symplectic, DS Consultancy and ÜberResearch).
More than 100 development partners continuously involved
From day one it was clear that such a large project could not be realized in corporate isolation, and instead would only be successful with involvement from all stakeholders in the research ecosystem.
Soon after reaching out to partners and clients from research organizations, funders, publishers and even R&D heavy corporate organizations, more than 50 joined the effort and suggested more than 60 others who signed up over the following months.
During monthly calls, the Dimensions team presented product plans, achievements, and setbacks -- while the development partners shared use cases, advice, and concerns.
This support and trust from the development partners has made the Dimensions project truly special, and we are going to continue the program into the future.
See which organizations our development partners came from:
Development partners
6|18th
5|23rd
5|14th
Explore how Dimensions data can be used to identify trends that are emerging in my discipline.
5|9th
ORCID collaboration supports community efforts toward unified author disambiguation
4|19th
Comments from our team in response to questions raised on the lis-bibliometrics JISCMail list
4|2nd
Mark Hahnel, the CEO and founder of figshare, uses Dimensions data to explore data repository needs.
3|22nd
Hear more about the process of implementing DImensions Badges from two very early adopters.
3|14th
Dimensions Head of Product, Christian Bode, announces the release of a highly anticipated new feature.
2|27th
Our API wizard, Simon Porter, shares how to build institutional collaboration diagrams using the Dimensions Search API
2|23rd
Use our Library Toolkit to help researchers understand the powerful information that is now freely available to them.
2|14th
Read Outsell's article about why VP & Lead Analyst, Jo McShea, believes the launch of Dimensions is genuinely game-changing.
1|30th
Read more about our plans to collaborate with the bibliometric research community in an effort to develop better views of our data.
1|26th
Altmetric's Product Development Manager Jean Liu shares behind-the-scenes insights from building the Dimensions Badge.
1|18th
Dimensions lead Christian Herzog addresses the points raised in this insightful Tweeted review
1|13th
Built with and for the research community, Dimensions is designed to provide unique insights across the research lifecycle
4|25th
Hear about new partnership from FZ Jülich Library Director, Dr Bernhard Mittermaier
4|5th
Research Intelligence manager, Gert Goris, speaks more about why EUR adopts new tools
3|12th
Read about an exciting new collaboration in open science from the Health Research Alliance.
1|13th
New platform from Digital Science provides free search and citation data for 89 million publications
1|13th
A new report from the Consultancy team at Digital Science explores the practical applications of Dimensions
1|13th
Learn more about the content and technology that resulted in 4 billion connections between 128 million documents
Quotes
Dimensions and the research ecosystem
Digital Science efforts to bring the data in Dimensions together, to realize the 4 billion connections and to build the application and APIs, has and will continue to be enormous.
This was done with the belief that the fruit of these efforts should never be closed but instead a platform for other not-for-profit or commercial organizations to build on.
Closed ecosystems slow innovation and discovery, both being farthest from the Digital Science mission.
Dimensions' hope is to cultivate a developer ecosystem to collaboratively explore new data applications that will inspire and drive research innovations within the research community into the future.
If you are interested in discussing future possibilities with us, please complete the attached form and we'll be in touch.
Dimensions and the research ecosystem
Corporate research and development and Dimensions
Unlike existing tools, Dimensions brings together 4 billion research connections - relationships between scientific experts, publications & citations, grants, clinical trials, intellectual property, and market response.
The first release includes the most comprehensive grouping of research-related data sources - 89M publications, 873M citations, $1.3T in grants, over 30M patents, and a comprehensive clinical trial database, as well as public data points from news media, policy documents, and social attention.
This robust, cleansed, and connected dataset can be used in our own Discovery environment - Dimensions - or directly through our API's in raw and/or enriched format(s) to utilize for knowledge management, business intelligence, and/or internal product teams.
This database allows for easy identification of experts globally and Key Opinion Leaders across domains. It spots trends from the earliest signals of scientific activity - in awarded grants - through pre and post-publication activity - through commercialization and therapeutics.
It will help identify academic partnerships, ensure teams stay on-top of the latest literature, simplify pharmacovigilance, monitor competitors, and more - all within seconds.
There is nothing like it available today. And almost every organization who collaborated on this development has expressed their own internal struggles to organize and enrich these same datasets for a breadth of mission-critical decision-making and analysis.
Corporate R&D
A platform for publishers, supporting the research community
With Dimensions, Digital Science has designed an innovative cross-publisher discovery engine which is freely available, allowing publishers to increase the discoverability of their content in a tool focused on the needs of individual researchers, organizations, funders, and governments.
With the metadata backbone sourced from publicly available databases such as CrossRef and PubMed, publishers can also enhance the discoverability of their collections effortlessly while making use of both the Dimensions Metrics API and Dimensions Badges to contextualise their publications.
Find out
Publishers
When looking across the research landscape historically, different groups participated and contributed in the research process within their own circles.
From researchers to research administrators, funders to corporate R&D and publishers - each had their own tools, data sets, lenses in which they viewed their data and unique structured workflows.
These artificial divisions limited the ability to understand the real value of a particular research object diminished the ability to identify broader trends and dampened the possibilities for future discoveries.
With Dimensions, Digital Science has realized an innovative research information infrastructure that is collaborative, comprehensive, and flexible - and has become uniquely positioned to support a diverse range of use cases.
By design, Dimensions allows each user to define their own experience to be as broad or specific as it makes sense for their pursuits.
Who is Dimensions for?
200+ funders rely on Dimensions to reach their strategic goals:
For years, leading funders have been using the robust Dimensions grant database to transform their workflows - more than 200 to date.
Applications have been broad, from designing funding strategies and programs to positioning their funding programs in the international research funding landscape, to even supporting individual funding decisions based on automatic report funding summaries on both researchers and institutions, using advanced AI-based classification.
With the newly expanded scope of Dimensions, funders can do even more with access to an even broader and more integrated view of the funding and research landscape including grants, publications, clinical trials, and patents - all seamlessly linked with relevant impact metrics.
Learn more about how funders have been leveraging Dimensions including how Dimensions helps with National Assessments
Government & Funders
89 million publication records, 870 million citations, 50 million Altmetric mentions and more - freely available
For researchers, being able to find quickly the relevant publications, the key players or newcomer in a certain area and the quick access to full text documents are the key use cases which come to mind immediately when thinking about the current data and tool landscape.
Access the free Dimensions application covering 89 million publications, contextualised with grants, patents and clinical trials by visiting https://app.dimensions.ai/.
And Dimensions covers these - but there is more to Dimensions:
- Search through full-text index of more than 50 million articles and books,
- Powerful faceting: narrow it down to what is really relevant
- Get to the full text with one click: in the free version for about 9M OA articles and more
- Linked information: publications contextualised with grants, patents, clinical trials and Altmetric mentions
- Researcher profiles (beta): appr. 20 million researcher pages showing the activity of the individual.
Researchers
360º Support for Academic Institutions
In an increasingly competitive research landscape, research organizations work tirelessly to offer an attractive home for both existing and prospective researchers.
These efforts range from ensuring the organization is well poised and competitive within the national or international research system to attract much-needed resources, as well as providing individual researchers with the right tools, data, and resources to succeed.
Dimensions was uniquely designed to support different groups within a research organization, from research administrators to students and research staff:
For students/researchers: a powerful discovery tool for publications, grants, patents and other research outputs, one click full-text access for subscribed content - helping researchers in their core mission.
For librarians: a robust and reliable platform that enables you to analyze and provide the latest and most relevant results to users, faster than ever before.
For research administrators: a robust view of research outputs and impacts of research within an institution. Flexibly designed for ongoing internal use or for planning/evaluation exercises.
Learn more about Dimensions and research organizations