Maintaining accreditation with Altmetric Explorer at BI Norwegian Business School

“It helps us discover research outputs that look interesting and prioritize which ones to investigate for impact”

– Craig Aaen-Stockdale, Senior Adviser, Research Administration, BI Norwegian Business School

Craig Aaen-Stockdale is a senior adviser in the research administration of BI Norwegian Business School – an independent, not-for-profit foundation and the main provider of research-based knowledge on business and management disciplines in Norway.

Craig specializes in bibliometrics, impact, scholarly publishing and research evaluation. Part of his role is supporting his organization’s efforts to maintain accreditation with three major business school bodies: AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System), and AMBA (Association of MBAs).

Accreditation is essential to business schools, helping them to compete globally and attract top talent. “But maintaining these accreditations is a lot of work,” explains Craig. “There’s nearly always some sort of accreditation process going on, from mid-term reports to full evaluations.”

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The challenge of demonstrating societal impact

Over the past few years business schools have been criticized as too theoretical, instead of producing practical knowledge that businesses could use in the real world. As part of this, there was growing pressure for schools to demonstrate the societal impact of their research.

In 2020 AACSB published a white paper setting out the inclusion of societal impact in their accreditation processes and requiring a business school to produce a narrative tracing a path from its strategic focus, activities and output to the eventual societal impact.

“It’s quite a high bar,” Craig stresses, “because it includes a very specific requirement for examples of research that have already had a positive societal impact – not just something that could potentially have an impact in the future. That’s not always an easy thing to discover, let alone demonstrate.”

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Investigating research impact with Altmetric Explorer

One of the tools that makes this job easier for Craig is Digital Science’s Altmetric Explorer, which tracks media, policy, and social mentions of academic research.

“It all starts with Altmetric Explorer,” confirms Craig. “We use it as a discovery tool to point us in the right direction. It helps us discover research outputs that look interesting and prioritize which ones to investigate for evidence of impact.”

The tool has been integrated with BI’s CRIS system, allowing Craig to verify and search through both internal and external publications. This means he can review the publications of even recently joined researchers who haven’t yet published anything while at BI.

Craig can search through all the research outputs and see how they rank on the Altmetric Attention Score. “For example, we can see where they’re mentioned in news articles, in policy documents and on social media,” he says. “Policy documents are usually a good place to start, because most of our societal impact comes through influencing policy; for example, we have a lot of economists writing official reports for the Norwegian government, and our law department contributes to things like changes in legislation.”

“You have to follow the trail of breadcrumbs and try to write an impact story that makes sense. And Altmetric Explorer really helps us do that.”

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Pinpointing research with provable impact

The Altmetric Attention Score helps Craig spot things that could potentially be interesting. A prime example that caught his eye was a recent publication where researchers were looking at foreign aid.

Altmetric Details Page – Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts

“If there’s an influx of foreign aid into a country that’s got weak democratic institutions, you see a corresponding increase in the money flowing out into offshore bank accounts in tax havens,” says Craig. “The researchers calculated that around 7% of foreign aid is siphoned off this way if there aren’t democratic institutions to prevent this happening.”

Altmetric Details Page – Policy documents

The research gained a lot of attention and was widely reported in the news. And on looking into that news coverage, Craig found undeniable evidence of the research’s impact. “It turned out that this publication had actually resulted in the resignation of the Chief Economist at the World Bank.”

Altmetric Details Page – News

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Using Altmetric to join the dots

Using Altmetric Explorer means Craig can quickly collect enough information to write a draft impact narrative, which he takes to the relevant researchers to validate and to fill in any blanks. Then he writes the final version, hyperlinking to sources, and includes it in the report submitted to AACSB.

Crucially, the impact narrative helps BI show the peer-review panel the real-world impact of its research, so that the business school can maintain its prestigious accreditations.

“There’s an element of investigative journalism in this work,” says Craig. “You have to follow the trail of breadcrumbs and try to write an impact story that makes sense. And Altmetric Explorer really helps us do that.”

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Find out what Altmetric can do for you

Interested in how Altmetric can support your organization? Reach out to the team and unlock hard evidence of your research impact.

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