What are Priority Research Areas
Priority Research Areas are:
AMU is a strongly internally differentiated university, and it was fundamental important to determine the Priority Research Area procedures (POB): the applied bibliometric analysis of AMU publication structure and its changes were correlated with obtaining external competitive research funds achievements to obtain synergy effects.
To determine the number and range of possible Priority Research Areas, therefore not only bibliometric data from 2013-2017 was used but also financial data from the same period – most often per employed researcher in a department (financial data) and in discipline by ASJC category and research area (Scopus Subject Area).
The basic founding of the newest AMU strategy is simultaneously to increase publication parameters and indirectly related research financial parameters. The financial parameters are additionally transferred into indirect cost from external funds for POB and whole university, which makes the university position in research areas stronger. At the same time the final number of POB was adjusted in detailed to the most important determinant of the research university – prestigious publications indexed in global databases.
Three ASJC discipline-level parameters were considered as important in the bibliometric analysis identifying possible POBs: the number of publications indexed in the Scopus database; the number of citations they received and the average citation impact factor normalized to discipline (FWCI) for 2013-2017. In addition, the number of researchers writing within a particular Scopus Subject Area and given ASJC area and its changes in that time, and increase of the publications number over the analysed period was of significance. Data averaged over thousands of publications allowed to identify the priority areas for university development – the most predestined to compete globally in science. The number of publications and its growth over time at the ASJC discipline level reflect the potential of the discipline, the number of citations reflects the resonance of publications in the science, and the FWCI indicate the place of the discipline at AMU in the world from the comparative perspective through the normalized level of citation impact.
From the 27 Scopus Subject Area, only 10 were selected by the procedure described above in which AMU has the best research results and then a detailed analysis was performed at the ASJC discipline level and 3-5 items were selected with the highest potential.
The 33 selected disciplines were compered at the ASJC level and grouped into 5 POBs (1 monodisciplinary and 4 interdisciplinary). The number of POBs was limited to five to implement strong management mechanisms and avoid excessive fragmentation.
Those 33 disciplines of ASJC grouped in 5 POBs reflect current scientific potential of AMU, the research conducted in those disciplines have the strongest impact on the scientific development of AMU and on world science.
