Academic Analytics

Academic Analytics compiles data from federal, university, and private sources. Article and Conference Proceeding publication data are obtained directly from publishers, using digital object identifiers (DOI®). Citation data are derived via DOI®-to- DOI® linkages based on the literature cited section of published journal articles and conference proceedings. Book data are collected from the British Library catalog and Baker and Taylor, Inc. Grant data are collected from federal granting agencies and select private sources. Patent data are obtained from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, as well as the World Intellectual Property Organization. Honorific Award information is derived from publicly available information from national governing societies. Performance and Exhibit data can be added directly to Faculty Insight by faculty.   

• Publication of scholarly works (e.g., books, journal articles)
• Citations in selected journal articles
• Research funding by federal agencies
• Dollar amount awarded from nationally competitive grants
• Select honorific awards
• Number of journal articles, citations, books, grants by tenure-track faculty members

Academic Analytics calculates the unit level Scholarly Research Index (SRI) based on the mean SRI scores of individual faculty members within the unit. Thus, the SRI of each unit or other level of aggregation – program, department, broad field, institutions, etc.- is the average of the deduplicated faculty who comprise that unit. 

Metrics for Faculty-Based Scholarly Research Index (Default Metrics)

Metrics for the person-based Scholarly Research Index are:

• Total Journal Articles
• Total Awards
• Total Books
• Total Book Chapters
• Total Citations
• Total Conference Proceedings
• Total Grants
• Total Grant Dollars
• Total US Patents
• Total Clinical Trials
  
   

Academic Analytics utilizes a weighting scheme for these metrics, which varies across taxonomic classifications.

Scholarly Research Index (SRI) Methodology Description

The Scholarly Research Index (SRI) is a methodology to provide comparative context for faculty or unit research activity compared to taxonomy peers. This comparison is based on the metrics Academic Analytics collects and maintains for the peer analysis/benchmarking tools.

Person level SRI is a composite score, based on the metrics weighed in the faculty member's unit taxonomic classification.  The composite score is displayed on a Z-Score scale, but it is NOT a composite Z-Score.  SRI is derived in this manner because the practice of using Z-Scores to identify possible outliers can be misleading, particularly as it relates to variable or small sample sizes.  This methodology ensures the SRI is scaled based on the number of faculty in the taxonomy.  

Within each taxonomy, Academic Analytics calculates each faculty member's rank on each of the metrics and multiplies each of those metric ranks based on the respective metric weights.  Academic Analytics sums the weighted ranks for each person and calculates the Z-Score of the summed weighted ranks for each faculty member within the taxonomy.  That Z-Score is displayed as the SRI score in the peer analysis/benchmarking tools.

Scholarly Research Index (SRI) Calculation Steps

1. Rank the total metric counts for each faculty member in the taxonomy
2. Calculate the number of faculty in the taxonomy
3. Calculate each faculty member's rank within the taxonomy, for each metric
4. Multiply each metric rank by the metric weight
5. Sum the weighted ranks for each faculty member
6. (Total Weighted Rank - Discipline Total Weighted Rank Mean)/Discipline Total Weighted Rank Standard Deviation = Scholarly Research Index (SRI)

The keyword search uses natural language processing techniques and targeted algorithms to compare keyword(s) against profile data and identify relevant scholars and grant opportunities. 

Academic Analytics generates a set of key research terms for each scholar by comparing productivity data for a given scholar against all available productivity data. The more times a term appears in a specific scholar’s productivity data, relative to the number of times the term appears in all productivity data in the collection, the more closely associated the term is to the scholar. 

Faculty are to be evaluated by the instruments and metrics detailed in unit-level faculty evaluation plans. Faculty Insight can be used to generate reports of activities (CVs) that faculty turn in to their chairs/deans as part of the annual review process.

All tenured/tenure-track faculty in all academic units (including Law and clinical/medical disciplines) and ranked non-tenure-track research faculty. Currently, ranked clinical faculty who have grants are also included.   

KU submits a faculty roster each year to include all tenure/tenure-track faculty and non-TT faculty who are expected to produce research as of November 1 of a given academic year. Academic Analytics restricts the benchmarking faculty included on each tab to the following criteria:

Department Faculty

• Faculty included in departments have HR lines or formal/informal courtesy status.
• Faculty can be associated with multiple departments regardless of funding.
• Faculty with the following titles are included:
  • Professor, associate professor, assistant professor with or without the research modified title - (assistant/associate) research professor.
• Faculty excluded are: 1) modified clinical title, 2) librarians, 3) lecturers, 4) professors of practice, 5) teaching professors, and 6) law faculty (except if the law faculty are associated with another department).

Program Faculty

• Faculty associated with a PhD research doctoral program (actively mentoring PhD students and sitting on dissertation committees).
• Faculty with chair, co-chair, or member privileges of indicated unit are included.  Outside members or Grad Studies Representatives should not be included.

Other information

• Faculty administrators without a tenure home should not be included.
• Faculty on non-sabbatical leave or emeritus professors are not included.

No. Our license to Digital Measures expired on June 30th 2021. All of the data held by Digital Measures was migrated to the Faculty Insight tool, available as part of our subscription to Academic Analytics. The Faculty Insight tool lets faculty manage and add items to their research activities profile and then generate a pre-formatted P&T CV.   

Scholar profile keywords are matched to funding opportunity data from a third-party funding database. Grant opportunities are updated daily and contain approximately 40,000 open funding opportunities from over 10,000 public and private entities. Funding opportunities may be filtered by using the filter button on the left-hand side.   

Please contact KU Analytics, Institutional Research and Effectiveness at AIRE-Help@ku.edu to ask additional questions.

Faculty Insight is a portal that allows you, as a faculty member, to see the scholarly works that are presented about you in Experts at KU, but more importantly provides tools to help you identify research funding opportunities, suitable honorific awards and networks based off your profile and activities.

While a prior iteration of Experts at KU existed from about 2017 to 2019, the relaunch of Experts at KU and the availability of Faculty Insight was launched officially to the KU and KU Medical Center faculty in December 2021.

Anyone with an active network account at KU can access Faculty Insight.  However, only matched faculty will have a scholarly profile associated with them. At KUMC, these matches are paid faculty with an appointment of at least 0.75 FTE and at the rank of assistant professor or above.  For faculty in the School of Medicine, we do not include faculty on clinical track appointments. For faculty in the School of Nursing and School of Health Professions, all tenure-track faculty are included, along with other scholarly-intensive faculty. As of December 15, 2024, faculty meeting the above criteria and employed as of October 31, 2024 have been matched.

In general, articles, conference proceedings, books and book chapters, grants, clinical trials, patents, honorific awards, and presentations. Please refer to other sections in this FAQ for more details about the scope.

When you log into Faculty Insight, you will notice Search, My Profile, and Help tabs.  My Profile is a section that shows a timeline of scholarly works, as well as related terms/people, collaborations, and suggested awards and suggested funding.  You can edit basic characteristics of your profile using the drop down by your name in the upper right corner and selecting Edit Profile.  We encourage you to enter a picture, edit your preferred display name, and further down the page, a research summary, research interests, and additional research keywords to further help the system refine and tailor funding and award opportunities associated to your profile. It is important to note that KU Medical Center does not allow users to do any direct editing of the works presented within Faculty Insight. 

Please contact Matt Schuette, director of institutional research & academic analytics, if you have any questions.

No. Faculty Insight, as KU Medical Center uses it, is not a data entry system. However, some of the works shown in Faculty Insight and Experts at KU do come from FACT. These include awards and honors at the state/local/university level, presentations, and other publications.  We do not include extramural and intramural research entered into FACT.

There are three primary sources referred to as AcA, KUMC and Digital Measures in your profile:

1. AcA: Academic Analytics provides data that are essentially publicly available, including articles and conference proceedings from publishers who submit to CrossRef and have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), books and book chapters from Baker & Taylor and The British Library, federal research grants from 14 different agencies, clinical trials from the NIH U.S. National Library of Medicine, patents from patentsview.org and national and international honorific awards from the Academic Analytics database, a repository of 20,000+ awards that come directly from national governing societies.  This information is updated on a nightly basis.
2. KUMC: Enterprise Analytics provides award-level information obtained from KUMC’s Research Administration database detailing extramural funding awards received, including the title, funding amounts, start and end dates and personnel involved on the award in roles such as PI, M-PI, Co-PI, co-investigator, and key person. We currently supply an updated award file once a year, in late November.
3. Digital Measures: Only certain elements are brought over from FACT, namely awards and honors at the state/local/university level, presentations, and other publications. Data from FACT are refreshed at least once a week.

Faculty Insight and Experts at KU are not meant to be a full representation of your curriculum vitae, nor a replacement for FACT and its capabilities.  The data included presents a broad representation of the types of research, publishing activity, and recognitions received, to showcase the large breadth of activity at KU/KUMC, as well as providing enough information for Faculty Insight to provide faculty with relevant tools to their lines of study and interest. If you see an egregious error in the data, or you believe there are significant works missing (within the scope mentioned above), please contact Matt Schuette, director of institutional research & academic analytics.