Mr Ed Wright1
1Elsevier, Sydney, Australia
Biography:
Ed Wright is a Solutions Specialist at Elsevier, with deep expertise in SciVal, Scopus, and the evolving role of AI in research analytics. With over 20 years of experience in education and leadership, Ed works closely with universities across the region to support evidence-based research strategy, impact assessment, and data-informed decision-making. His insights bridge the gap between technology and research, helping institutions maximise the value of bibliometric tools in a rapidly changing scholarly landscape.
Abstract:
Senior academic leaders are under increasing pressure to effectively communicate research impact to diverse stakeholders, from funding bodies to the media. This challenge goes beyond traditional bibliometrics, encompassing complex influences on policy, culture, environment, and technology, and varies significantly by stakeholder perspective.
This discussion introduces an innovative, AI-driven framework that moves beyond conventional qualitative methods to address this. Leveraging Elsevier's AI Factory, it integrates quantitative metrics with qualitative narratives for a comprehensive approach to understanding and quantifying impact. At its core is human-validated AI analysis, efficiently identifying and summarising impact topics from citing publications and extracting key facts for rigorous manual curation. Through real-world examples and innovative visualisations, this method proves effective in closing a critical gap in research assessment, offering robust, data-driven evidence that powerfully complements qualitative evaluations.