Academic Analytics FAQs

 

Academic Analytics is a research‑intelligence and benchmarking platform that compiles multi-faceted data on individual scholar research productivity, aggregates individual data to the academic unit level, and benchmarks unit data against peer units across the country.

In late 2023, UMBC acquired a subscription license for Academic Analytics to help us better understand and support the variety of research & creative achievement expertise of our faculty. UMBC’s license provides password-protected access to the online portal for Academic Analytics.

Since then, UMBC has worked extensively with Academic Analytics to compile and aggregate internal and externally collected information on the research and creative achievement expertise of our faculty. The Vice President for Research and Creative Achievement is the primary contact for Academic Analytics at UMBC.

 

UMBC is committed to supporting scholarship and research productivity, recruiting scholars to advance new discoveries and ideas, leading innovation, and enhancing the national and international reputation of our faculty and our university.

The Academic Analytics platform may improve UMBC’s efforts to identify strong candidates for nominations to prestigious awards. In addition, it may enhance the abilities of our faculty and administration to identify potential interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships across the campus and beyond, in areas of research and creative achievement. The Academic Analytics platform is expected to help identify new funding sources for such endeavors, as well as funding opportunities to expand our broader research and creative achievement portfolio.

 

As described on its FAQ page, Academic Analytics offers many products.  Four of the main tools are: Faculty Insight, Research Insight, Benchmarking, and RCA at a Glance.

Faculty Insight provides research development opportunities for faculty, including focused links to potential funding opportunities and potential honorific awards. It also allows for many of the same functions provided by Research Insight. Individual scholars are able to edit their profile, keywords, and search/notification settings within Faculty Insight.

Research Insight provides information to facilitate research funding and support strategic planning – such as the strengths, variety, and trends in the RCA conducted at UMBC – to help uncover and collate funding opportunities, build internal and external teams, identify subject matter experts, and explore other strategic goals/priorities.

Benchmarking is a tool that is not currently being utilized at UMBC but may be in the future. This tool would allow UMBC administrators to benchmark unit data nationally for a given timeframe. Once it becomes available, access limitations will be in place.

RCA at a Glance is a dashboard that provides a quick overview of trending research topics and current RCA products at UMBC, including books, articles, grants, and more, from the past 36 months.

 

To access Faculty Insight and Research Insight, users must log in through myUMBC.

RCA at a Glance is a public-facing tool that does not require a user to be logged in.

It may be necessary for a user to clear the cache on their computer if they are experiencing trouble logging in.

 

The Academic Analytics Database is compiled from two broad sources:

  • Publicly available and accessible data, collected by Academic Analytics for faculty research and scholarly activity in several areas, including book publications, journal article publications, federal research grants, professional honorific awards, and more. In brief, publication and citation data are obtained using DOI, book data from publishers and library catalogs; grant data from federal granting agencies and select private sources; honorific awards from information made available by professional societies; and so on. This data covers the past 5 years.
  • University submissions of faculty data to Academic Analytics. At UMBC, these data include rosters of faculty employees, and data on faculty research and scholarly activity drawn from faculty annual reports, via Faculty Success (formerly Digital Measures). Data sourced from Faculty Success is particularly important for capturing performances, exhibitions, and other creative works, as well as grants and fellowships not otherwise captured by Academic Analytics. UMBC currently includes data from 2024, with additional years to be added going forward.  Users can edit or manually add scholarly products from prior to 2024 by editing their individual profile in Academic Analytics.

Faculty Insight and RCA at a Glance are populated by data from both sources – 1) publicly available and accessible data collected by Academic Analytics and 2) data from Faculty Success.

Research Insight and Benchmarking are populated by publicly available and accessible data collected by Academic Analytics.

 

Faculty names, institutional rosters, and data from Faculty Success are compiled at least annually by UMBC’s Office of Institutional Research and the Division of Research and Creative Achievement and directly submitted to Academic Analytics, with quality assurance checks as part of that process.

 

UMBC faculty members included in the database consist of faculty who are full time, whose principal occupation assignment includes or may include research. For example, this includes: Full time, tenured or tenure track faculty (Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor); full time Clinical faculty, Principal and Senior Lecturers, Professors of the Practice, Research Professors, Research Associates, Research Scientists, and Librarians III and IV.

Not included in the database are adjunct faculty, part-time faculty, postdoctoral scholars, or members of UMBC’s full time senior leadership.

 

Faculty rosters and institutional data from UMBC are updated and provided to Academic Analytics at least annually, usually in mid-Fall.

Data from Academic Analytics refresh regularly. Because of reliance on institutional submissions and public collection of available data, however, lag times may occasionally occur.

 

In late 2023, UMBC established the Academic Analytics Faculty Review Committee (AAFRC). This committee engages in ongoing review of policies and procedures for access and validity of the data as well as principles and best practices for use of Academic Analytics at UMBC.

The AAFRC will review all requests for use of the data and provide oversight of this three-year pilot of Academic Analytics at UMBC. This faculty-only committee consists of shared governance leaders and at-large faculty members appointed by the Faculty Senate in consultation with the Colleges and the VP-RCA. It is currently comprised of faculty representatives for each of the Colleges and the School of Social Work, and also includes members representing the Faculty Senate, the Academic Planning & Budget Committee (APB), and the Research & Creative Achievement Council (RCAC).

The AAFRC will provide Annual Reports to the Faculty Senate and to the RCAC. It will also perform a comprehensive review of use and outcomes, including an assessment of overall faculty community satisfaction with this tool, prior to renewing the license with Academic Analytics after the original three-year period.

The data regarding the use of Academic Analytics that the AAFRC, in conjunction with the Division of Research & Creative Achievement (ORCA) and the Office of the Provost, will be gathering over the course of this three-year pilot will enable UMBC to determine, among other things:

  • How the use of the data from Academic Analytics aligns with UMBC’s commitment to equity, justice, diversity, and inclusion.
  • If the data have been successfully used to identify faculty for prestigious awards or grants, specifically faculty who might not otherwise have been identified through our existing subscriptions and internal channels of communication.
  • If the data has enabled more interdisciplinary collaborations with other institutions and across UMBC.

At UMBC, utilization or referencing of Academic Analytics is prohibited in the areas of:

  • Promotion and tenure deliberations;
  • Setting salary or merit increases;
  • Annual faculty performance evaluations;
  • Decisions over retention offers;
  • Faculty termination;
  • Decisions regarding any personnel action deliberations;
  • Resource allocation, including faculty lines, to colleges, departments, or programs;
  • Decisions regarding department/program elimination;
  • Decisions regarding any personnel action deliberations.

 

Access levels depend on institutional roles (e.g., faculty, department chair, dean).

UMBC faculty may access their own data through their Academic Analytics faculty profile at any time.

Access to data beyond the faculty level are granted to those with appropriate institutional roles as well as members of UMBC’s Academic Analytics Faculty Review Committee, after they have completed UMBC’s Academic Analytics User Contract and attended institutional training.

Full access to all individual faculty-, Department-, and College-level data is limited to select leaders in UMBC’s Office of the Provost and the Division of Research & Creative Achievement.

 

If a faculty member discovers an error in their own data appearing in the Academic Analytics Database (e.g., duplicative publications, missing publications, mis‐attributed grants, incorrect faculty affiliations), they may log in to their own Academic Analytics profile to edit it.

A faculty member may also want to update their data within their Faculty Success profile, which populates to Academic Analytics’ Faculty Insights and RCA at a Glance tools.  Changes to Faculty Success will not correct any errors showing up in Research Insight or Benchmarking, as those tools are populated by publicly available and accessible data collected by Academic Analytics.

For other UMBC-related errors or concerns, please email acan@umbc.edu.

For other Academic Analytics-related errors or concerns, please contact the Academic Analytics Help Desk by emailing help@academicanalytics.com or by scheduling a meeting through the “Book a Call” form on their website.

 

Academic Analytics’s YouTube Channel provides numerous videos that demonstrate how and for what purposes Academic Analytics can be used.

Academic Analytics also offers regular webinars and events that may be of interest.

 

For questions related to Academic Analytics at UMBC, please email acan@umbc.edu.

For other Academic Analytics-related questions, please contact the Academic Analytics Help Desk by emailing help@academicanalytics.com or by scheduling a meeting through the “Book a Call” form on their website.