The mission of the Aurora-network is to tackle global complex problems, in areas like the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's), or the EU's Societal Challenges (SC). This project tries to make insightful what Aurora's relative contribution is to science in these problem-area's, and how policy makers have pickup on the research tackling these complex problems.
Aim of the Project
To show the distribution of research-output that the Aurora universities and the Aurora network as a whole is contributing to each of the 17 sustainable development goals. (There is overlap with the 7 EU societal challenges).
Main Deliverable
A bibliometric tool to survey and analyse the research output and impact of a unit (department, faculty, university, universities network) in terms of its *) societal relevance, *) academic quality & impact, *) societal impact.
If possible, the tool will offer a mechanism to combine and reconcile the societal categorisations for research of UNESCO´s Sustainable Development Goals and the European Union´s Societal Challenges.
Intended effect:
- To enhance a ‘problem/challenge’ based approach – in contrast to a disciplinary approach – to assessing quality and impact of research as a mechanism to strengthen to focus on (and appreciation for) problem-oriented research, both within Aurora and among policy makers at national and European level.
- To increase insight in research strengths and complementarities within the aurora network, as a tool to help forge strategic alliances within societal relevant themes across the universities in the network.
Bibliographic Instrument
The bibliometric instrument performs per SDG a query on a bibliometric database eg. Scopus or Web of Science. (SDG queries are created and reviewed by bibliometricians in the Aurora network.) For each SDG the publication skew is determined (based on number of papers published), for those papers the excellence is determined (top percentiles of journals), the availability of those papers to society (open access), and the refereces to those papers in public policy documents from (N)GO’s. The interactive diagram below shows a proof of concept how this could look like for a limited selection of SDG’s.
Read more about the concept in the Whitepaper [1]
The illustration below shows the hypothetical feedback-loop between policy and research. Here we illustrate the possible influence policy from societal partners like (N)GO bodies can have on the research output on policy-topics. And on the other hand, that open and excellent research can be fed-back into re-eveluation or creating new policy. Thus research influencing society in an in-direct level.
[1] Maurice Vanderfeesten, & René Otten. (2017, November). Societal Relevant Impact : Potential analysis for Aurora-Network university leaders to strengthen collaboration on societal challenges. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1041405
- Jan 2018: Project Kick-off
- Feb 2018: Initial version of 17 SDG queries
- March 2018: Reviewed version of 17 SDG queries
- April 2018: data collection & first analysis based on 17 SDG queries
- May 2018: publication of Aurora SDG university profiles
- June 2018: evaluation on utalisation of SDG university profiles
- Sept 2017: Presentation of Proof of Concept for Dies Natalis Speech from Prof Pieter vd Beukering about Sustainability
- Nov 2017: White paper with proof of concept on Potential analysis for Aurora-Network university leaders to strengthen collaboration on societal challenges
- Dec 2017: Team Site for Aurora Bibliometricians
- Feb 2018: Seminar on Societal impact.
- Feb 2018: Initial version of 17 SDG queries
- April 2018: Interactive diagam
- Is it an idea to differentiate the show cases on the SDG and SC topics?
- (Aurora institutions who use a RIS (eg. PURE), is it an idea to share the other elements (projects, activities, awards, etc.) that relate to a SDG/SC?
- Present results in next AurorASIRR meetup?)
- Is the Gross Academic Value template a useful framework to use in the aurora catalogue of societal impact (ACASI)?
- Develop consensus on keywords for search queries on 24 societal relevant topics (17 SDG’s & 7 SC’s)
- Work on institutional profiles (production and excellence) of these societal relevant topics
- Present results in next AurorA SIRR meetup
Contact
- Project leader: maurice.vanderfeesten@vu.nl
- info@aurora-network.global
