After months of hard work together with over 100 research institution and funder development partners, we’ve finally launched the Dimensions platform and dataset – a very large new source of scholarly impact data and content. At launch, the system comprises 128M documents with nearly 4 billion connections amongst them: $1.3T current and historical research funding; 34M patents; 89M research articles; and 380k clinical trials. The Dimensions dataset is enriched with links between all these content types, researcher profiles, ORCID data, and GRID geotagging, and the content has been categorised into subject areas using machine learning.

We’ve also started calculating some essential indicators – all of them close to the data. While we’ve covered the basics like counts, field normalized citations and H-indexes you’ll notice that we haven’t invented any crazy new metrics (believe me, the temptation was there). That’s because we’re not keen on imposing our own view on the data from the get-go – we want to work with the wider bibliometric research community. Ultimately we’d like to help close the gap between bibliometric research and the application of its results to daily research management tasks or research policy efforts.

We’re doing that partly because it makes sense from a product development point of view, partly because we’re building on community initiatives like the excellent I4OC and want to give back and partly because, well, it’s the right way to work in the metrics space. We’re supporters of the Leiden Manifesto and having an open, well-researched dataset helps us live up to the responsibilities outlined there that we have as a provider.

We’re already reaching out to a small group of bibliometrics experts to invite them to an informal meeting in April 2018 where we’ll discuss the best ways to bring them on as partners and collaborate – and what the focus of those collaborations should be.

We have a couple of places available for new partners and interested parties who would like to join us to discuss questions like the following:

  • How can the linked data from grants to publications, clinical trials, patents and policy papers be used for innovative approaches?
  • How can we improve the scope and quality of the data for better analysis together?
  • How can the Dimensions data and platform be made available best to support innovative approaches in the area of research management and bibliometric research?
  • How can innovative metrics be developed, tested and provided using the Dimensions platform?

The meeting will take place in the London area and we hope that a productive meeting during the day is followed by even more productive discussions over food and drinks!

For the time being – please have a look as well at the openly available Dimensions Badges and open metrics API – which can be found here.

If you are interested to join contact Euan Adie and Mike Taylor directly! Places are limited and we will be in touch.