Academic Research Policy-Making and Evaluation Using Graph Visualisation

Higher education institutions need to have a social responsibility and attainable objectives regarding their education and research activities. In our approach we use multi-indicator analysis in order to evaluate the research activities of an institution as well the degree of achievement for a specified research policy. Our work is a part of prototype system that supports academic evaluation and decision-making processes concerning research policies, using visual analytics. The presented case study emphasises on the analysis of the research collaborations indicated in published research work. Our main data sources are the Scopus library, Google Scholar and the Quality Assurance Unit Service of a Greek higher education institution. Data are retrieved and enriched by additional analysis and graph metrics. The developed system provides enables user to evaluate aspects of the quality of academic research activities in the context of specific policies and criteria and make informed decisions on the establishment of new strategies.