“Dimensions is a constant reference point for my work.”
Deanna Zarrillo, Associate Publisher at Oxford University Press (OUP), UK
Deanna Zarrillo is an Associate Publisher at Oxford University Press (OUP), who balances her part-time role with a PhD in Information Science. Her work at OUP involves ad hoc consultancy and in-depth analysis, specifically focusing on journal health within the science portfolio.
In 2021, OUP adopted Dimensions to address its increasing need for comprehensive and scalable data analysis capabilities. Dimensions offered a unique advantage with its linked data, including grant information, enabling OUP to gain deeper insights and support its current journals, while also informing its acquisition and launch strategies. The platform’s ability to provide a high-level overview and to enable users to drill down into specific details allow for more flexible and dynamic analyses.
Deanna uses Dimensions daily, for tasks ranging from quick queries to extensive landscape analyses. “Dimensions is always open in my browser. It’s a constant reference point for my work“, she shares.
Analyzing the research landscape
Dimensions plays a crucial role in enabling Deanna to perform landscape analyses at both the journal and portfolio level. It enables her to identify gaps, track trends, and contextualize internal data against the broader scientific landscape.
“A lot of what I use Dimensions for is conducting landscape analyses, either at the journal level with a group of competitors, or in terms of finding gaps of fields of research that maybe we aren’t covering as well. I also use it to explore why we might be seeing certain submission trends within different subject areas,” Deanna explains. Dimensions helps her track developments over time across different variables, including fields of research, open access, and geography. “We use Dimensions to help contextualize the things that we’re seeing and not just make an assumption.”
“Not only does Dimensions help us map the scientific landscape, but its linked data and analytical views bring even more clarity to the landscape’s texture. Triangulating with the internal data, making meaning through trends and metrics, identifying gaps, and having conversations with subject matter experts are all extremely important day-to-day analyses that are facilitated through Dimensions.”
Deanna Zarrillo, Associate Publisher at Oxford University Press (OUP), UK
Dimensions is used across many departments in OUP, including its business analytics and open access teams. The open access team works with Dimensions’ funder and institutional data to analyze read-and-publish trends and to anticipate future authorship patterns in light of funder mandates.
Visualizing data for deeper insights
One of the standout features for Deanna are the intuitive visualizations Dimensions offers, and the flexibility in how a user can customize these views. These save her time because “the visualizations help to provide instant meaning, as opposed to exporting records, then doing the analysis, and then making the charts.”
Deanna finds the network charts particularly valuable for mapping scientific landscapes and identifying key trends and actors. She shares, “As an information scientist, the network charts are one of my favorite features. I really love the embedding of the VOSviewer, and I have personally seen a lot of success from analyzing network charts at the journal, field, and regional level, and observing how the connections evolve over time.“
Looking ahead
OUP plans to leverage Dimensions for broader strategic analyses to confirm or challenge internal assumptions and industry trends. “We’ve been exploring how best to integrate our industry knowledge with data from Dimensions to help confirm more business-level priorities,” Deanna shares.
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