Identifying potential academic collaboration partners in Australasia

Introduction

Accelerate Associates completed a mapping exercise for The University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI) to identify potential academic collaboration partners in the Australasian region.

The ESI is an interdisciplinary centre leading cutting-edge research into solutions to problems of environmental change. The aim of the research was to identify overseas academic organisations and research institutes with complementary research interests.

The Brief

The University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute required a review of universities in the Australasian region. The research objective was to identify institutions and leading academics undertaking high quality research in three key focus areas specified by the Environment Institute.

Our Approach

The study was completed using secondary research methodologies. Desk research was used to identify all universities and higher education establishments in the region. Research performance indicators were then identified for each organisation. In addition, leading research focus areas and academics were identified through reviewing: online resources, citation indexes and by interrogating Elsevier’s SciVal tool.

Results

Accelerate Associates delivered a short list of institutions to consider for academic collaboration that matched against the Environment Institute’s areas of expertise. A database was created that provided contact details for each university as well as research performance metrics and named academics of interest.

The Environment and Sustainability Institute plans to use the mapping exercise output to initiate early discussions with relevant overseas institutions in order to develop and explore collaborative research opportunities and linkages.