Thomson Reuters Launches Analytics World Challenge to Identify Which World Cup Competitor Leads in Scientific Research

- Inaugural competition will measure the global impact of each nation's scientific research to determine the world's research champion

PHILADELPHIA, June 4, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Intellectual Property and Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced the launch of the inaugural Thomson Reuters Analytics World Challenge, a unique competition designed to measure the research impact of countries participating in the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup tournament. The competition will begin Wednesday, June 4, and close with the naming of the global research champion on Monday, July 14. The Analytics World Challenge can be followed on Twitter @InCites_TR and the Analytics World Challenge website.

The FIFA World Cup may celebrate the football prowess of the 32 participating countries, but the Analytics World Challenge will put their scientific research efforts to the test. Beginning Wednesday, June 4, Thomson Reuters Analytics World Challenge will align the competing countries in five rounds of weekly competition to determine which country will be awarded the title of Global Research Champion.

Winners will be identified by reports pulled from Thomson Reuters InCitesTM, the leading web-based research analytics platform enabling institutions and governments to measure research output and impact, monitor trends, and benchmark performance against peers at the individual, departmental and global levels. The reports will be based on InCites indicators such as a country's percentage of international and industry collaborations as well as highly cited and hot papers. Highly cited papers constitute the top one percent of papers in a research field published in a specified year, while hot papers are those published within the past two years that received a high rate of citations in the most recent two-month period, placing them in the top 0.1 percent of papers in their field.

Football and research fans alike are invited to submit brackets with their predictions of the winners. Participants will be awarded one point for each correct guess. At the conclusion of the contest, the 20 entrants with the most points will each be awarded a $75 USD Amazon gift card. The final deadline for submission is 4:00 p.m. GMT, Friday, June 13. Early bird bonus points will be awarded to any participants submitting by June 6.

"We are excited to host the first-ever Analytics World Challenge to celebrate the international research impact and scholarly collaboration of the countries participating in the World Cup," said Gordon Macomber, managing director of Scientific and Scholarly Research at Thomson Reuters. "As an industry leader in evaluating the performance and impact of research on a global level, Thomson Reuters InCites offers a unique perspective of each country's efforts."

Analytics World Challenge fans can follow the game with the latest updates on the InCites Twitter Feed @InCites_TR and view the weekly updates on the official Analytics World Challenge bracket.

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