Supporting Research Funding Strategy

The primary objective of this white paper is to illustrate the use of quantitative data-driven analyses to support research performance benchmarking exercises and to provide evidence for determining national and international research strategy. The analytical techniques discussed in this paper can be applied to Scopus data to produce the information needed for identifying potential research priority areas, for determining research funding strategy, and for supporting the grant proposal evaluation process. We show how to gain insight into

• the level of maturity of research in a country,
• a country’s research strengths in broad and niche areas and how they compare to peers, and
• the structure of the research landscape in a country, at the institution and individual researcher levels.

Finally, we present techniques to improve the quality of the grant proposal evaluation process. Each technique is presented in terms of the key questions it is designed to answer and illustrated with insightful examples. The various graphs shown in this white paper can be easily produced using customized or pre-formulated Excel templates.