KnowledgeLink Newsletter

October 2007

Strategic decisions are informed by analysis of performance and trends. Whether you are tracking research performance, looking for partnership or commercialization opportunities, making funding decisions, or formulating research strategy, you rely on data. How can you be sure your analysis is based on accurate, objective information and sound metrics?

Focus your efforts on decision-making
Chances are your strategic plan emphasizes performance metrics. Thomson Scientific can augment your current research related metrics, such as the amount of federal research funding, with information on research outcomes and impact. Everyone is striving to ensure the quality and status of their research; the only way to do this is to know where you've been, where you are now, and where you want to be. With our quantitative data, you can benchmark your research against other institutions, and set measurable goals for your faculty and departments. If you are collecting the data yourself, you are probably spending valuable time identifying sources, compiling papers and citations, checking accuracy, and putting the evaluation statistics into an accessible, meaningful format.

With the products of the Thomson Scientific Research Services Group, you can focus your time, instead, on the results — and their implication for your decisions.

Objective, authoritative statistics
Decision makers for universities, research institutions, journals, funding agencies, and governments around the world use research performance data from Thomson Scientific to gauge research impact, identify potential partners, recruit researchers, promote accomplishments, set goals, and determine return on research investments.

Accurate, up to date, and easily understood, Thomson products include research performance metrics not available elsewhere. Thomson's citation metrics are indicators of the impact and usefulness of research.

Products from the Thomson Scientific Research Services Group are based on the objective, authoritative data in Web of Science. Specially designed algorithms restructure and transform Web of Science citation data into meaningful evaluation statistics for decision makers. Data extractions and analyses can be created to meet a client's specific needs.

Products and services for decision makers
Thomson Research Services Group suggests these products and services to inform strategic choices:

• Science Indicators — Track and compare research production over the last 26 years. Identify the fields with the highest impact. Benchmark your research with total numbers of papers, citation growth, and other metrics. Indicators are available for analyzing nations, states, universities, research institutions, and journals.
• Citation Reports — Analyze research at the author and paper level, create researcher profiles, identify highly cited authors, collaboration patterns, and more. Integrate this database with other information to achieve a complete data source for internal evaluations. Citation reports are available for nations, states, universities, research institutions, and journals.
• High-Impact Papers — Identify the top researchers, institutions, and countries working in a field with this database of the field's most influential articles. Track how highly cited work in a field changes over time.

More information
More information, including free demos and product tours
Contact the Research Services Group