The 1st SciVal Southern African User Group Conference

Elsevier organised their first SciVal Southern African User Group Conference in collaboration with the Department of Library Services of the University of Pretoria.  It was held on 16 May 2019 in the Merensky library auditorium and was attended by 50 delegates from 13 SA and Namibian universities. 

In her welcoming address Prof. Stephanie Burton spoke about UP’s research strategies and the reasoning behind them.  She explained how data as provided by SciVal was used by the University Executive to evaluate and compare and to decide about the direction the University should take.

The keynote speaker, Dr Nick Tan from the National University of Singapore gave some useful tips on what he and a team of analysts do to secure their University’s 1^st place in the rankings for Asia.  For instance,  they focus on not publishing in journals ranked in the bottom 10%.

Representatives from the University of Pretoria, University of Namibia and University of Cape Town each presented an interesting case study done by their Universities.  Sunette Steynberg, University of Pretoria, showed how the research output of young researchers could be identified and benchmarked.  Anna Leonard, University of Namibia, explained how SciVal was implemented at their university and showed some basic analysis that was done and to what benefit.  Dr Dianne Bond from the University of Cape Town used bibliometrics in order to identify gaps in research. By this method, postgraduate students are prevented from duplicating research that has already been done, saving a lot of time and money.  This practice is already applied at the research proposal stage.

A couple of very informative and inspiring presentations were given by members of the SciVal team, Chinmay Panigrahi, Lucia Schoombee and Richard van Haaren.  View the presentations of the day here (https://mailchi.mp/e61037c98bd9/elsup-may16?fbclid=IwAR2fn8osNLpw8ulW7O2deR6C9p9YX3SNuh2g_4uOhegamzobM7l7fPxL8_U.)

The most significant benefit of the day was to meet colleagues from other Southern African universities who are subscribed to SciVal.  This gave us an opportunity to share best practices, but also to form networks.

From left to right: Mr Chinmay Panigrahi, Senior Product Manager, Elsevier, John Sterley, Elsevier,  Mohamed Khairy, Sales Manager for Research Information Management and Research Data Management, Elsevier, Ibrahim Mohamed, Regional Director for Research Intelligence, Elsevier, Prof Stephanie Burton, Vice Principal: Research and Innovation and Postgraduate Studies, University of Pretoria, Lucia Schoombee, Elsevier Consumer Consultant for Research Intelligence, Mr Richard van Haaren, Elsevier Regional Manager for Research Software Solutions, Mr Amir Mohamed, Elsevier Regional Manager for Research Intelligence.