New Research at UW–Madison website creates connections and amplifies scholarly success
A new campus tool is making it easier to find research collaborators on campus, while also highlighting the impressive productivity of campus researchers.
Consider this list: Authors of more than 22,600 articles; presenters at more than 1,500 conference proceedings; and generators of over $2 billion in grant funding.
All of these activities have been conducted within the last three years by members of the UW–Madison research community and are captured in Research at UW–Madison (https://wisc.discovery.academicanalytics.com/dashboard), a searchable website to identify research and research projects.
“We decided to invest in this tool, in part, to help our stakeholders who want to better understand the range of research and scholarly activity of UW–Madison researchers.,” says Provost Karl Scholz. “The site showcases not only the range, but the extraordinary depth and volume of scholarly activity at the UW–Madison.”
Research at UW-Madison includes information from public sources, as well as information from campus systems.
“A benefit of the site is that it doesn’t rely on scholars updating their information, although they are able to edit their profiles to add scholarly works that do not appear in Academic Analytics or university-provided core data, including works like software, performances and exhibitions,” says Allison La Tarte, associate director of Academic Planning and Institutional Research (APIR). “There also is an opt out option for anyone who does not want to be included on Research at UW–Madison”
APIR is the campus liaison to Academic Analytics, which populates the scholar profiles from available information in CrossRef on journal articles, citations, conference proceedings, books and book chapters. Academic Analytics data, updated nightly, also includes federal grant awards, honorific awards, patents and clinical trials. UW-Madison institutional data rounds out the information available through Academic Analytics and includes additional grant data, courses taught and technologies available for licensing from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF).
Scholar profiles are available for current tenured and tenure-track professors, recent Emeriti faculty, clinical health science faculty, permanent PIs, and other scholars that have had profiles in the WARF Discovery Portal. WARF will soon be replacing its portal with Research at UW–Madison.
Based on feedback from faculty, efforts are underway to also add center and institute affiliations to faculty profiles.
“Research at UW–Madison provides a new way of looking at research accomplishments of scholars, departments programs, and the entire institution,” says Steve Ackerman, vice chancellor for research and graduate education, “and it increases the visibility of the university’s research enterprise to industry, foundations and other potential collaborators, as well as prospective students and faculty members.”