Scholarly Accomplishments summarizes the research and creative achievements of the faculty in the academic units across campus. For a research university like CU Boulder, it is critical to measure the scholarly accomplishments of our departments in some standardized way not only inside the campus but in comparison to other institutions. Fortunately, recent advantages in research data collection allow us to go beyond simple publication counts and rankings based on reputations. Based on the data made available through Academic Analytics, we can now measure the relative scholarly achievement of most units on campus. The elements of research and creative work examined by Academic Analytics include the number of publications, the amount of grant funding received, citations to previous work, and honors and award recognition to the faculty (Nobel Prizes, MacArthur Grants, membership in National Academies, and so forth). These factors are captured on both a per capita and total basis to give an aggregate measure that can then be compared to other PhD-granting departments in the same field.
Between the last academic prioritization exercise (2014) and the current one (2018), the measurement of scholarly accomplishment was refined to better reflect the standing of CU Boulder units in relation to cognate units at peer institutions. In particular, Academic Analytics data were narrowed so that CU Boulder faculty are compared only to peer faculty at peer, AAU institutions. This change makes the data more reflective of CU Boulder’s expectations that its faculty will achieve prominence in scholarship and creative work equal to that of faculty at the top institutions in the US. Specifically, CU Boulder faculty were compared in terms of scholarly accomplishment to faculty at AAU institutions, not to those at all PhD-granting institutions; faculty in CU Boulder units that do not grant the PhD were compared to faculty at AAU peer institutions that do grant the PhD (since we expect our faculty to be competitive with AAU peer faculty in scholarly accomplishment even if their unit does not offer the PhD); and faculty in departments that cover more than one field (for example, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics) were disaggregated so that they were compared to faculty in the same field at AAU peer institutions.
For units that offer the PhD, we then scale this ranking as a percentile ranking among PhD-offering programs in that discipline. For instance, Geography’s ranking is 100% because it scores as the top program of 87 Geography PhD programs in the US and Canada. In this way we can compare the scholarly quality and accomplishments of units across campus relative to their accomplishments in their respective disciplines. Programs not granting PhDs are scored at the median percentile. All programs are then ranked by quintile.