Frequently Asked Questions
What demographic constitutes the population in the data?
All tenured and tenure-line faculty are included. Non-tenure line research faculty with titles of Research Professor, Associate Research Professor, and Assistant Research Professor are included. College of Medicine Faculty classified in the basic and clinical sciences are also included.
Does the data exclude any faculty?
Yes. All non-tenure line teaching and research faculty without titles of Research Professor, Associate Research Professor, and Assistant Research Professor have been excluded from the portal, along with all Penn College faculty, and College of Medicine faculty who are not classified as “Basic” or “Clinical” sciences.
What data can I see?
Articles & Conference Proceedings: 2004-Present
Books & Book Chapters: 2003-Present
Grants: 2006-Present
Honorific Awards: Varies by award
Clinical trials: 1995-Present
Patents: 1976-Present
How often is the data refreshed?
Faculty rosters are updated annually in a new release for the Benchmarking tools within Academic Analytics in early November each year, and are based on a September 30th institutional census date.
When are faculty rosters updated?
Faculty rosters are submitted based on an institutional census date of September 30th and provided to Academic Analytics each spring. By early November each year, that data is made available to users in a new release. For example, a 30Sept2023 Faculty Roster was sent to Academic Analytics in Spring 2024, and that will be available to our users in the portal by early November 2024.
How should this data be used?
- Generative purposes; to offer context for understanding; and to start and facilitate conversations that support the growth of individual faculty members and units.
- Support faculty in identifying new funding sources for research projects
- Supporting faculty recognition initiatives, including the identification of faculty for honorific awards, internally and externally, particularly for underrecognized faculty.
- Identifying research successes for communications purposes.
- Promoting and building teams, interdisciplinary units, and collaborative research networks.
- Identify faculty mentors and mentees to help faculty achieve or regain high levels of research productivity.
- Support analysis of department and program strengths and weaknesses in relation to peer departments at other institutions as part of divisional or departmental reviews.
- Identifying external reviewers for program reviews, tenure & promotion, and other similar needs.
- Identification of areas where a unit can benefit from strategic hiring of new faculty
- Providing additional data for strategic hiring, retention, and retirement planning.
- Penn State may display its own content as received from AcA on Penn State’s own internal websites; however, Penn State may not reference specific rankings of other institutions by name.
- When using comparison ranking, Penn State will only use the context that a department/major is within a range of institutions, such as “in the top 25…”
How do I request access?
More information regarding access levels and Penn State’s credentialing process is provided here.
Who should I contact with questions?
Please email AAnalyticSupport@psu.edu with any unanswered questions.