A Magazine for Alumni and Friends
Research Infosource, an independent Canadian research, consulting and publishing firm, has ranked Wilfrid Laurier University as Canada’s most efficient research university.
“This is a strong testament to our research efficiency and our emerging capacity and strength as a research-intensive institution,” said Rob Gordon, Laurier’s vice-president of research. “As a university with a long tradition of meaningful scholarship, we are now working to maintain this efficiency as we scale up to being a comprehensive and research-intensive university.”
Research Infosource, which bills itself as “Canada’s source of R&D intelligence,” in April released data on the publication efficiency of Canada’s top 43 research universities. Publication efficiency is a standard measure of research output that refers to the ability of a university’s researchers, including faculty and students, to turn research funding into peer-reviewed scholarly publications.
The firm tracked research funding from 2003 to 2012 and research publications from 2005 to 2014. The gap allowed for research to be conducted and published. During this period, the average research funding to generate a Laurier peer reviewed publication was $36,000, the lowest of any university in the country. In comparison, the least efficient Canadian university had an average cost per paper of more than $166,000, nearly five times higher than Laurier’s.
Laurier has also improved its research efficiency over time. Between 2005 and 2009, Laurier generated 1,150 peer-reviewed publications with an average cost of $41,200. Between 2010 and 2014, this was reduced to $33,300 per paper.
– Daniel Rankin