WP1

During the fall months, WP1 participants have carried out two tests ofDigital Science’s research information system Dimensions. The first test was aninitial, unstructured test of data and functionality. The feedback from thefirst test was used to construct the second test, which focused on coveragei.e. how well the universities are represented in Dimensions in terms ofpublications, citations, affiliation information etc. Specifically, WP1participants used a test template to compare data from Dimensions with theirusual data source(s) e.g. Web of Science, Scopus, Pure. Data was analyzed foreach of the analytical views in Dimensions including fields of research, sourcetitles and funders.

Stay tuned for information on the outcome of the test of Dimensions.

WP2

WP2 Lead Prof. David Budtz Pedersen was plenary speaker and rapporteur at the EU Presidency Conference in Vienna on the Impact of Social Sciences & Humanities November 28-29. The high-levelconference has already left a mark on the negotiations of FP9 Horizon Europe. In the “general partial agreement” reached by the EU Council on Friday, there is a stronger commitment to “integrate” SSH compared to H2020 legislation. In the current text of Horizon Europe, it is underlined that “…the social sciences and humanities (SSH) shall play an important role acrossall clusters”. 

News from the ERA Portal.

WP3

WP3 is still at its experimental stage – seeking inspiration on different types of network analytics and/or other types of visualizations that could compliment traditional research analytics. To kick-start this process PedroParraguez, one of the OPERA project partners, was invited to create a workshop, which purpose was to build a common co-creation framework that facilitates the collaborative work within the OPERA project, especially in what regards the creation of data-driven indicators and visualizations. The workshop called OPERA WP3Workshop: Creation of data-driven indicators and visualizations was meant to be only the start of a process that should evolve over time, helping to collect design ideas, assumptions, findings and requirements. 

The workshop was organized within a co-creation framework and structured into six building blocks:

1. The project’s guiding challenge
2. The key questions that we want to answer with this project
3. The indicators that will help us find a data-driven answer to the posed questions
4. The data visualization solutions that will help us communicate the indicators to change-agents / decision-makers / stakeholders
5. The analytics and data infrastructure necessary to produce and deploy the indicators and visualizations
6. The data that we will use to feed our indicators and visualizations

A more detailed overview of the framework used can be found in a blog post by Pedro Parraguez available at: https://dataconomy.com/2018/10/the-cart-before-the-horse-in-data-science-projects-back-to-basics/.