The result of “Development of Data Infrastructure on R&D Activities in Universities and Public Organizations – NISTEP’s Contribution to Micro-Data Analysis –”

For comprehensively understanding the status and trends of R&D activities in a country or a region, various data on research input and output should be collected, processed, and organized. Specifically, data analysis of research output data obtained from bibliographic databases at the organizational or departmental level (micro-data analysis) is necessarily accompanied with accurate identification of author-affiliated organizations and departments which generally have numerous name variations.

In order to help micro-data analysis conducted by researchers and policy-makers, NISTEP has carried out a project “Development of data infrastructure on R&D activities in universities and public organizations” since FY2011. Through this project, it prepares and publishes an organization name dictionary playing a central role in identification and some lists of name variations in databases for universities and public organizations in Japan. This report outlines the project, with some results of analysis on name variations of author-affiliated organizations. Finally, it discusses importance of standardization of organization name description.