New online tool creates a searchable database of UW–Madison research and scholarship
Over the last three years, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have authored more than 21,400 articles, presented at nearly 1,500 conferences, earned almost 500 patents and generated nearly $2 billion in grant funding.
These are among just some of the activities now captured in a new campus tool called Research at UW–Madison, a searchable website to identify research and research projects, foster research collaborations, and highlight the achievements of UW–Madison scholars.
“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 UW–Madison.”
The Research at UW–Madison website includes information from both public and campus sources.
“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. “There also is an opt-out option for anyone who does not want to be included on Research at UW–Madison.”
Academic Planning and Institutional Research is the campus liaison to Academic Analytics, a service that populates the scholar profiles from available information in CrossRef, which links digital information from 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 emeritus faculty, clinical health science faculty, permanent principal investigators, and other scholars that have had profiles in the WARF Discovery Portal. WARF will soon replace 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.”
