SciVal offers the flexibility to analyze a variety of pre-defined Research Areas or to self-define bespoke research areas, representing any field of interest to you.
1: Research Areas can represent an area of strategic priority or any other field of interest and can be built using any of the components detailed below. In the ‘Define entity’ link select ‘Research Areas’
a. Search terms Define your research area based on publications that match a search query
b. Entities Select and combine any of the below
c. Topics Select and combine Topics to create a new Research Area
2: Get an estimate of when your entities will be ready to use
At the end of the creation process, you will be informed if the weekly metrics recalculation is running and so will delay the creation of the entity. Click the ‘Data sources’ link to see when the next weekly recalculation will occur.
Note: Research Areas with less than 10,000 publications are available to analyze immediately. However, Research Areas with greater than 10,000 publications can take around 6 hours to be computed and there is a 200,000 publication limit. You will be notified when a Research Area is available for use in SciVal.
3: Refine the Research Area by limiting to publications in the past 5 years, or by limiting or excluding specific Subject areas, Scopus Sources, Institutions, Countries / Regions, Organization types or select specific Publication Years
4: Name your Research Area, add relevant tags if desired, and save for analysis throughout SciVal.
To define a new entity:
Click 'My SciVal' in the top right corner of your screen.
In My SciVal, choose a category (for example Groups of Researchers') and open the 'Define a new entity'.
Now click on one of the links in the menu to define a new entity.
This will take you through a step-by-step process to define, name and save the new entity.
Note: Some entities with a large number of publications are not available immediately but take up to 6 hours to compute. You will receive an email as soon as the entity is ready to use.
You can share entities you've defined in SciVal (such as researchers, groups of researchers and Research Areas) with other SciVal users at your institution.
Example: You could set up part of your institution's department structure as groups of researchers in SciVal, and then share that with others at your institution. Or you could define a Research Area in SciVal and share that with the other members of your research team. Sharing is possible with any groups or individuals within your institution.
By default when you share an entity, you remain the owner. Other users can only view the entity. You are the only user who can make changes to that entity, and the only user who can delete it from SciVal. However, you have the option to transfer the ownership of a shared entity.
A shared entity is the same for all users. When it is changed or updated with new publications, these changes are immediately visible to all users.
When you create an entity, your preferred subject classifications are also recorded (you can have up to 4 in total). When the entity is shared, the recipient of the entity can also only use the 4 same subject classifications and cannot choose any of the other categories. Only the user who created the entity can choose which subject classifications are available for the entity.
Go to My SciVal.
Click on the 'Share' icon for that entity to bring up the sharing settings.
You can invite SciVal users at your institution by entering their email addresses, separated by commas. You can create and manage your invitation list from the sharing panel. Invited users receive an email - which can be personalized- with a link that gives them access to the entity
Use the drop-down menu to the right of the filter box in My SciVal to display only entities that have been shared with you ('Entities shared with me'). You can also choose to view only entities that you have shared with others ('Entities shared by me’)
Use highly cited publications and publications in leading Scopus sources. Two metrics often used to illustrate the excellence of research are Outputs in Top Citation Percentiles and Publications in Top Journal Percentiles. These show how much of your institution’s publication outputs are among the most cited globally and published in the world's leading journals.
How can you see the contribution of an institution to an SDG?
In Overview of metrics, you can see the top 10 contributing institutions by Scholarly Output and in Trends you can see the top 100, but also filter by region. If you would like to analyze the contribution of an institution to an SDG, follow these steps to create a Publication Set:
Select for SDG's under Research Fields in Explore.
Find the institution in which you’re interested.
Use the region filters to help locate the institution.
Click on the Scholarly Output number to see the underlying publications.
Create a Publication Set.
Use the 'Save as Publication Set' option.
You can now look deeper at the institution’s contribution to the SDG in the Explore "Summary", Benchmark "All Metrics" sections, based upon the SDG search query.
Learn more about the SciVal Certification Program.
All entity types within SciVal can be viewed in the Explore and Compare sections. The table below highlights the entities available to analyze across all six modules.
The following video provides instructions on how to use the Explore and Compare sections to view Entities.
In addition to managing entities within the entity selection panel, My SciVal provides additional functions including editing and sharing self-defined Research Areas.
Inform strategic reports and development of targeted funding bids with insights into the research Topics your institution is most active in and the key researchers.
1. Starting from anywhere in Explore, open the entity panel
and select an Institution
2. Go to the Topics page to see which Topics and Topic Clusters the Institution has contributed to and is active in
3. Using the radio buttons you can either analyze individual Topics or the aggregated Topic Clusters
4. Choose between the table view and different visualization options
5. Limit to view the top x% of worldwide Topics or Topic Clusters by Prominence
6. Show Top x by Scholarly Output
7. Wheel view of Topics or Topics Clusters
8. Select the Table view to get an overview of the Topics or Topic Clusters ranked by Scholarly Output
9. Select a Topic or Topic Cluster and analyze it in further detail
10. Get a quick overview of the Topic for an Institution, the Field-Weight Citation Impact, the level of international collaboration and the underlying keyphrases sorted by relevance
11. Explore the Topic or Topic Cluster worldwide
Gen AI Topic titles, summaries and Publication Centrality.
12. You can access the summaries by clicking "About this Topic/Topic Cluster" link in the Topic entity header, or "i" icon in the Topic listings
13. SciVal Topic summaries and titles are powered by generative AI (GenAI) and LLM technology
14. Publication Centrality, available for Topics, shows how strongly linked an entity’s publications are to their SciVal Topics
• a publication is said to be strongly linked or central to the Topic to which it is assigned if it falls within either of the first two categories: ‘definitive’ or ‘very good’
Define a new Researcher
• Click Researcher in the ‘Define entity’ link or the Create / Import link at the bottom of the Researchers and Groups section in the entity panel
• Follow the workflow to identify and add the researcher to SciVal
Import Researchers
• In the ‘Define entity’ link click ̒Import Researchers’
• Use the XLS, CSV or JSON templates, a text file, or paste a list of Scopus author IDs or ORCIDs (up to 1,000)
• Refine profiles where required
• Add profiles to a new Group or existing hierarchy
How to import a group of researchers
1. Importing your institutional hierarchy, or part of it:
a. Download and populate the Template:
b. Upload the completed Template:
2. Modifying existing hierarchies and synchronizing:
a. Export existing hierarchy:
b. Synchronize the updated hierarchy:
c. Verify changes and finish
Gain clarity around the bibliometrics used in University Rankings. Analyze, understand and generate insights based on the bibliometric datasets used in the THE and QS World University Rankings and the THE Impact Rankings.
1. In the Explore section, go to the Rankings page in the left-hand panel
2. View the Overall ranking positions across the major university rankings
3. Select THE World University Rankings, THE Impact Rankings, QS World University Rankings or ARWU Ranking to explore and analyze the bibliometric datasets in more detail
4. View and analyze the trends in the bibliometric drivers to enrich your understanding and inform your rankings strategy and plans
5. Click view list of publications to explore and analyze the publications considered in the rankings in further detail
6. In the Compare section Benchmark "Ranking metrics", compare your institution to peers across the bibliometric drivers to enrich your understanding and inform plans accordingly
7. Benchmark at the THE Subject, or QS Faculty area level to inform faculty and department level plans
8. Use the Ranking Tracker to get an overview of university's progress around the bibliometrics, contributing to the rankings
9. Produce peer comparison reports across all bibliometric drivers
For more details around the Rankings Analysis feature of SciVal please see the presentation in the section below ('SciVal Rankings Analysis deck').
For more details around the Rankings Tracker please visit this link.
Get an overview of your collaboration landscape. The map view in Current Collaborators gives you a global overview of the collaboration partners of your institution. You can then zoom in to a specific country. For example, to see your collaboration partners in France:
Select your institution from the entity selection panel on the left-hand side.
Go to 'Current Collaborators' and select the Map view
To find collaboration partners in France, click on the Europe marker to zoom in and see all the European countries where collaboration with your institution has taken place.
Click on the round marker shown in France to zoom in and see all collaborating institutions and researchers in France.
To access SciVal API endpoints on the new API platform, an API tool/app MUST implement the OpenID.
Connect (OIDC) authentication flow (authorization code). It is used to connect to the Elsevier Research Public IDP (Identity Provider) to retrieve access tokens based on user credentials.
full documentation to access the new SciVal API
Details you will need to access the new API platform
• API Key: As provided to you
• Client-ID: As provided to you
• Client Secret: As provided to you
• SciVal Researcher Group ID: As created by, or shared with, you on scival.com
• YAML file: As provided to you
• SciVal username: The account with which you created the Research Group or it was shared
• SciVal password: The password to the account
In the future, all APIs will be available in the new API platform.
