Digital Science launches Dimensions

Digital Science launches Dimensions: a next-generation research and discovery platform linking 124 million documents, providing free search and citation data across 86 million articles

Ground-breaking research information database links publications, grants, policy, data and metrics for the first time

Global technology company Digital Science is proud to announce the launch of Dimensions, a new platform that aims to democratise and transform scholarly search.

A collaboration between six Digital Science portfolio companies (Altmetric, Digital Science Consultancy, Figshare, Readcube, Symplectic and ÜberResearch) and more than 100 research funders and universities, Dimensions offers a better, faster way to discover, understand and analyse the global research landscape, without wasting time searching for information across multiple poorly integrated tools.

Dimensions breaks down barriers to discovery and innovation by making over 860 million academic citations freely available, and delivers one-click access to over 9 million Open Access articles. Within Dimensions, 124 million formerly siloed documents, including $1.2 trillion in funding, 86 million articles and books, and 34 million patents, are linked through 3.7 billion connections and contextualised with metrics and altmetrics.

Built using real-world use cases, it combines advanced concept extraction, natural language processing, categorization and complex machine learning to create a flexible and robust tool that meets the most demanding modern research needs.

Daniel Hook, CEO at Digital Science, says: “The Dimensions project is a response to an urgent need for a more modern and inclusive research information platform, one which truly services the needs of both researchers and research institutions. Digital Science has always placed a focus on close collaboration with the scholarly community to develop and deliver solutions that will directly benefit the future of research; in creating Dimensions, we are empowering researchers, institutions, government, funders and publishers to redefine the ways in which scholarly work is discovered and evaluated.”

Whereas previous tools and datasets have focused mostly on publications and citations, Dimensions takes a different approach: by integrating funded grants, publications and citations, altmetric data, clinical trials and patents, a complete picture of the research landscape emerges; from resources entering the system, research outputs, recognition, patents reflecting the commercial trajectory and the translation of medical research into treatments.

Under a pricing model designed to reduce the strain on institutional budgets, research organizations have the option to license additional data types and analytical functionality to benefit from a more comprehensive view of the research landscape. An extension of the one-click access to include publisher content licensed by the institution is also available. “We believe that access to scholarly data should be available at a fair and sustainable price,” says Christian Herzog, CEO of ÜberResearch and leading the Dimensions efforts within Digital Science. “We want to build a modern, collaborative, sustainable research world, and with the launch of Dimensions we are a step closer to achieving this. This really is the next generation of research discovery.”

Katie Keough, Director of Research Development, State University of New York Upstate Medical University says “The Digital Science team have worked closely with the research community and have built this new platform with real-world users in mind. It’s incredibly intuitive and easy to use, and combines unique data that will be extremely valuable in informing decisions made across our institution.” 

A new Dimensions API also provides access to the underlying data in the easiest and most flexible way possible, using a domain-specific language designed with non-technical users in mind. The API can be used not just for data retrieval but also to aggregate data or return different facets in one single API call, enabling direct integrations and machine-to-machine implementations.

Development partner Wilfred Mijnhardt, Policy Director at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University at Erasmus University Rotterdam, says “Dimensions offers a rich discovery platform for strategic analytics and intelligence on key elements in research performance like granting, publishing, patents and clinical trial dynamics. The Digital Science team has worked closely with the community and has built a solution with real-world users in mind, resulting in a well-designed interface that helps the user to have a very useful and enriching analytic journey.”

“Dimensions is an exciting new research database which serves as a gateway to a diverse set of essential information, for not only research administrators but faculty and researchers too,” say Cory Tucker, Head of Continuing Resources & Collections and John Novak, Head of Scholarly Communication Initiatives at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It provides any institution with a research tool that will make the research process more efficient and effective.”

For more information on licensing options please email the dimensions team.