WSU team lands NSF grant to benchmark impact of international research

NSF-IP-grant-Payumo-80PULLMAN, Wash. – The impact of international research on universities will be studied by a Washington State University team funded by the National Science Foundation.

The goal is to encourage universities to expand international collaborations, thus increasing knowledge discovery and global competitiveness, said lead project investigator and WSU adjunct professor Prema Arasu.

Tools generated by the two-year project will be applied to WSU as a pilot study, followed by testing at four other U.S. universities.

“This NSF project will result in a blueprint that will assist U.S. universities in documenting and evaluating the quality of their international research activities,” Arasu said.

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NSF grant team members: (L-R front row) Jane Payumo, Prema Arasu and Dan Nordquist; (L-R back row) Derek Brown, Marc Evans and TC Sutton. (Photo by Abbi Delgado, WSU Office of International Programs)

The $235,000 award partners WSU with Elsevier, a leading publisher of products and services such as Scopus, the world’s largest abstract and citation database. Using Elsevier’s analytical tools such as SciVal, as well as WSU records maintained by the Office of Grant and Research Development (OGRD), the WSU team will collect, process and analyze various publications, grants and patents that have international ties.

“Access to substantial data and development of a good set of metrics are key to analyzing international research productivity,” said Jane Payumo, co-project investigator and research associate in the WSU Office of International Programs (IP).

The team will design and implement a survey for research faculty in collaboration with WSU’s Social and Economic Sciences Research Center (SESRC) to provide insight into the dynamics of international partnerships.

“We hope to identify key variables that help predict the likelihood of researchers and scholars to engage in international collaborations relevant to their academic interests,” said team member Marc Evans, WSU professor of statistics. “Our study will also explore the impact of researcher attitudes toward international collaboration and their effect on research productivity and quality.”

Other team members are TC Sutton, IP; Dan Nordquist and Derek Brown, OGRD; and Danna Moore (SESRC).

 

 

 

Contact:

Jane G. Payumo, Office of International Programs, 509-335-8367, jane.payumo@wsu.edu