What we do
The Research Analytics (RA) team in the Division of Research, Innovation & Impact provides research and sponsored projects reporting, analyses and strategic decision support for the MU community. Our work products can be categorized into:
- Routine reporting that is accurate, insightful and timely.
- Strategic decision support analyses for trends, goal setting, national benchmarking and targeted initiatives.
For each product, we strive to:
- Provide deliverables appropriate to the use case, customizing the format and level of detail to the request.
- Apply a professional “analyst” lens before sharing the deliverable so that you receive the most strategic support you need without needing to learn all aspects of the data.
Scope of work
We use data from PeopleSoft grants, HR and financial systems to report on the proposal, award and expenditure (PAE) activity of our investigators. Sponsored projects are administrated through PeopleSoft grants and the PSRS is a key source of data for many of our reports. A sponsored project is scholarly activity conducted by MU that has 1) a principal investigator (PI) or program director (PD), 2) a budget and 3) a written project aim/scope of work.
In addition to sponsored project reporting, Research Analytics also provides research activity reporting. Not all research activity is sponsored; some is internally funded by departments and the division. All research activity is reported in the National Science Foundation HERD survey.
The Research Analytics team also works with investigators to understand sponsored data and identify how to update data if necessary. We work closely with the division’s Sponsored Programs Administration (SPA) for these activities.
Our team also collaborates with colleagues across the system to standardize reporting terminology, improve data quality and processes, create data warehouse reporting tables and set administrative data strategy for the division.
For questions related to only faculty (Academic Analytics, myVITA), student, HR or financial data, please visit other MU team pages for information. Research Analytics works with these teams to improve data quality and strategy; however, the team does not manage these data sets and does not report on them.
Requests
You may submit a request to researchanalytics@missouri.edu for many reasons, such as:
- Identifying experts on nanotechnology for a panel discussion and you would like to know who has funding in this area.
- Reviewing trends for activity with a specific funder to set baselines for goal setting.
- Finding eligible early career faculty that may be interested in applying to the NSF CAREER award.
- Receiving a summary of your own sponsored activity to see if the data was correctly entered before the promotion and tenure process.
- Obtaining a Power BI graphic that summarizes current MU funding from a specific sponsor or within a specific college, school or department.
Listserv
MU RA manages a listserv for the higher education research analytics/sponsored data reporting community. This listserv has nearly 100 institutions participating and can be used to share job postings, gather insights on reporting best practices and to find like-minded colleagues. To subscribe to this email listserv please see these instructions. Members can interact with each other by sending listserv emails to: RESEARCHDATAANALYTICS-L@PO.MISSOURI.EDU.
If you are a vendor interested in joining the listserv, please understand that the listserv is not for advertising products and services. We welcome vendor participation in conversations on training, collaboration and tool usage. By requesting access, you are agreeing to these guidelines.
We are soliciting ideas for how to engage colleagues in research analytics and utilize this listserv. Please email us if you would like to host a webinar or have other ideas for engagement.