The term “due diligence” carries as much weight for academic institutions as it does in some other sectors such as finance. And due diligence for academic institutions today requires that they navigate the complexities of research data and gather high quality insights from a huge number of sources. Solutions such as the ones offered by Dimensions can be crucial in this context. And this was highlighted at a recent Times Higher Education webinar held in collaboration with Digital Science.
The digital transformation of the education sector has led to an increase in the quantity and complexity of data, bringing with it opportunities to optimize strategy by harnessing data insights relating to research, recruitment and performance.
Ann Campbell, technical solutions manager at Digital Science, who was a panelist at the webinar, pointed out that in order to generate these valuable insights it’s important to think holistically, and it is important to consider not only the different systems involved but the different departments and stakeholders.
The siloed data systems in place at many academic institutions can make it difficult to gain broad insight, she explained, adding: “It’s better to have an overarching data model or a perspective from looking at the research life cycle instead of separate research silos or different silos of data that you find within these systems.”
The webinar panel agreed that relying on academics for self-reporting of research activities may lead to gaps in data, and that impact could also be missed due to a lack of knowledge or understanding. Dimensions on Google BigQuery is a solution that can address such challenges; it empowers academics to extract customized data from various stages of the research life cycle. By using these tools in tandem, researchers are able to seamlessly integrate external data with their own internal datasets, providing them with a more holistic view of their research activities. Such integration not only fosters collaboration but also enhances the quality and impact of academic research.
In another presentation at the Times Higher Education Digital Universities conference in Barcelona, Campbell explained how Digital Science enables organizations to bring disparate data together and view it in a way that facilitates stronger decision making on organizational strategy. Data also plays a role in ensuring organizations are hitting the mark when it comes to research integrity, industry partnerships and impact – the theme of another collaborative webinar between THE and Digital Science. The panel discussed how funders and publishers were increasingly concerned about research integrity, and solutions such as Dimensions Research Integrity, which are built with ‘trust markers’ as their cornerstone, can be essential tools in maintaining trust in research.
Read the Digital Science blog, Putting Data at the Heart of your Organizational Strategy, for more insights into this topic. If you have questions about how you can use Dimensions GBQ, contact the Dimensions team for a demo.