FSP Index Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Where do the journal publications and citations data come from? (answer)
Q: Where does Academic Analytics get books data for the FSP Index? (answer)
Q: How does Academic Analytics compile faculty lists? (answer)
Q: How is the taxonomy organized? (answer)
Q: What is a z-score? (answer)
Q: What comes in a client report? (answer)
Q: What is a "large research university"? (answer)
Q: Where do the journal publications and citations data come from?
A: We have partnered with SCOPUS, an Elsevier brand, for journal publications and citations data. SCOPUS is the most comprehensive database of its kind, covering over 16,000 journals.
Q: Where does Academic Analytics get books data for the FSP Index?
A: We have partnered with Baker & Taylor, allowing for access to their database of over 1.5 million books.
Q: How does Academic Analytics compile faculty lists?
A: A: Each year the names of every faculty member in every Ph.D. program in the country is collected. For FSP 2006-07 nearly 100 institutions returned information on their programs and faculty. For the remaining programs, our data collection team goes to the websites of each program to find the lists of doctoral faculty. We define “doctoral faculty” as faculty who are tenured or on the tenure-track, are research active, and are eligible to chair doctoral dissertation committees.
Q: How is the taxonomy organized?
A: The FSP Index 2006-07 taxonomy was designed to cover as many fields of study, and include as many Ph.D. programs, as possible while still providing meaningful results and useful data. The taxonomy has four levels: individual disciplines are grouped into aggregate disciplines, which are grouped into eleven broad categories. The whole-school level is the fourth level of the taxonomy. Universities are organized into groups based on the number of Ph.D. programs each has, and what range of fields these programs cover.
Q: What is a z-score?
A: Z-scores are a way to represent different kinds of data in a standard way; for instance, grant dollars won and books published can be compared on the same scale using z-scores. A z-score of 0 is the national average, a z-score of +1.0 or -1.0 indicates that a program is one standard deviation above or one standard deviation below the national average.
Q: What comes in a client report?
A: Clients receive five hard-bound copies of the FSP Index, including discipline-level tables for every discipline at the school, aggregate discipline tables, and broad field tables, as well as whole-school information and an internal program comparison chart. Clients also receive electronic versions of their complete reports, to make distribution of data throughout the university easier.
Q: What is a "large research university?"
A: At the level of whole institution comparisons (but not at the discipline or broad field levels) Academic Analytics categorizes universities according to the number of Ph.D. disciplines in which they currently train students and the breadth of coverage of broad fields by these programs. Our reason for doing this is to avoid institution-level comparisons of universities with dramatically different missions that might result in comparing Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with Ohio State University. For FSP 2006-07, we defined as large research universities those institutions that offer Ph.D. programs in at least 20 of the 172 disciplines covered AND with these programs covering at least five of the eleven broad fields (e.g, Engineering, Social and Behavioral Sciences, etc.). Universities in the LRU group range from those with 20 programs in five broad fields to schools with 111 programs in ten broad fields. Other institutions are classified as smaller research universities or as specialized research universities where a clear disciplinary focus exists.