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Library Research Support Services

SciVal is a research intelligence tool that provides access to the research performance of thousands of research institutions and their associated researchers from 231 nations worldwide, so you can visualise research performance, benchmark relative to peers, develop strategic partnerships, identify and analyse new, emerging research trends, and create uniquely tailored reports. 

SciVal is based on publication and COUNTER compliant usage data from Scopus, the world's largest curated abstract and citation database, as well as patent-article citations, awarded grant data and mass media mentions from NewsFlo. It uses Scopus data from 1996 to present, covering over 50 million records from more than 5,000 publishers worldwide. 

SciVal receives a weekly update of new data from Scopus and due to processing times this means SciVal is typically 1-2 weeks behind Scopus. SciVal offers an extensive array of simple and more sophisticated metrics, including Snowball Metrics which were defined through an academic-industry partnership to enable their confident and appropriate use in strategic decision making and benchmarking.

Note- SciVal can only analyse data from items that are indexed within Scopus, which may lead to a disadvantage for certain demographics.

Use Cases

Visiting an institution in another country? Quickly get an idea of key people and research interests.
We have run analyses highlighting areas of shared research interest between Plymouth and other institutions, and can run analyses to help focus collab
We run regular publicaton reports for research leads across the university for pre-loaded or bespoke groupings, including metrics to monitor KPIs
We can benchmark entities entities against other groupings to highlight differences in strategy or performance, inform planning, or showcase research.
We can help you to pull together a metrics report that showcases your strengths for funding, stakeholders, or marketing.
Whatever your question, scenario or requirement, please feel free to ask us for more information.

Report Options

We can run reports or provide metrics for a variety of purposes, pulling together publications information from PURE along with metrics from SciVal and other data sources, such as Web of Science.

We can run reports on or comparing various entities, for example:

  • Groups of researchers
  • Institutions or groups of institutions
  • Countries
  • Topics/ Topic Clusters (defined by SciVal)
  • Sets of publications
  • Research areas
As the university has signed the San Francisco Declaration on Researcher Assessment (DORA), use of the tool will be governed by our principles around responsible use of metrics and staff using metrics need to be aware of what this entails. We run regular researcher training on responsible metrics and an overview of the key principles can be found here.

Researchers
We can help provide metrics on your research, for example for funding or promotion. SciVal can also help identify collaborators and help you scope out potential topics/research areas.

Research Leads
We can help you track and showcase your research group's publications, benchmark against competitor research groups and scope out new strategies for research, monitor and track performance of publications. 

Senior Leaders
We can give you an overview of research performance and help track KPIs, or provide metrics to help inform strategic decisions.

Whether you would like regular reporting, or have a specific question that you would like to use metrics to answer, please feel free to ask.

Want to Learn SciVal?

The SciVal interface has recently had a refresh. While we update our guidance, please take a look at the training resources on offer via SciVal here.

If you are using SciVal independently, it is critical to be aware of the guidance around responsible use of metrics and ensure you use the most appropriate metrics for your use case.

We also offer SciVal training periodically throughout the year that is run by our dedicated SciVal consultant from Elsevier. If you would like group training from the SciVal consultant, let us know and we would be happy to arrange this.

Services

If you have any questions about SciVal you would be welcome to contact Open Research.

You can also book a 1:1 SciVal consultation using our online booking form.