Now more than ever for industrialized nations, the successful pursuit of science and technology is an imperative – an essential determinant of economic vitality and security. The foundation of this endeavor, of course, is a vibrant system of universities and research institutions in which to educate, train, and employ the scientists whose work will drive innovation.
Those institutions, furthermore, must not only be supported and maintained but also monitored and evaluated by administrators, so that overall strategy and the allocation of resources can be adjusted as necessary to optimize performance.
Poland, a nation with a considerable scientific enterprise – #23 in the world in overall output of scientific publications over the last decade, according to Clarivate Analytics Essential Science Indicators – is deeply involved in steering the improvement of its higher education and research. And the nation’s scientific and educational administrators grasp the importance of ongoing evaluation.
For example, a new report, “Peer Review: Poland’s Higher Education and Science system,” features a series of key messages, one of which highlights the need to “Enhance the adoption of sound evaluation practices and a quality culture to support the diversified higher education and science system….Evaluation should be firmly embedded in the policy cycle so that results would feed back into subsequent rounds of support and policy design.”
Currently, Poland’s government is revising its policy guidelines on the support of science and research. Clarivate Analytics, having already been a part of that effort with its InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, is about to increase its presence.
The company has undertaken an expanded partnership with Poland that will bring InCites to the nation’s top research institutions. These universities and research institutes, in accordance with new policy guidelines from Poland’s Ministry of Science and Higher Education, will rely on the performance-assessment metrics in InCites to establish strategies, priorities, and development plans for their research programs.
Clarivate recently reached a contractual agreement with ICM University of Warsaw, which coordinates licensing on behalf of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. During 2017, the Ministry used InCites and other Web of Science-based tools to assist in formulating its new oversight policies, as part of Poland’s nationwide effort to focus on research excellence. Subsequently, the Ministry chose to expand this arrangement in 2018, providing InCites to 85 top research institutions.
In turn, those institutions will use the range of evaluative tools in Incites – including the ability to assess and compare performance at the individual, institutional, and national/regional levels – to determine strengths, weaknesses, opportunities for collaboration, and other crucial data points. In this way, InCites analytics will support research activities on a national scale.
As Prof. Marek Niezgódka, director of ICM University of Warsaw, explains, “Considering the high usage of the Web of Science platform in Poland, expanding our partnership to include InCites was the natural next step. Due to the great levels of interest from Polish institutions of all sizes, ICM will advocate for a fast upgrade of the current InCites license to a national level.”
Learn more about Web of Science and InCites, from Clarivate Analytics.
