ORISE contributes to BESAC international benchmarking study

April 27, 2021

Established in 1986, the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC) provides valuable, independent advice to DOE on the Basic Energy Sciences program regarding the complex scientific and technical issues that arise in the planning, management and implementation of the program.

The International Benchmarking Subcommittee team was directed to identify “key areas of mission-relevant research and facility capabilities in which U.S. leadership is most threatened, advise on modifications to existing trade-offs (balance of resources) or new ways to leverage scarce resources and identify incentives that will retain and attract scientific talent.”

The International Benchmarking Subcommittee determined they would need additional assistance to gather information and enlisted ORISE to support the benchmarking study. ORISE was tasked with developing an information science methodology for searching/analyzing the scientific literature in five areas: Quantum Information Science, Membranes, Quantum Materials, Energy Storage, and Electrocatalysis and Polymer Uptake.

Recently, ORISE provided data for two phases of the search:

• Search results for 30 years (1990-2019) of peer-reviewed literature in each area, extracting keywords and location of the researches for each area. This data allows for further analysis to identify emerging topics/areas of research and where (geographically) the research was conducted.
• Taking the top one percent of the results of the last ten years (2010-2019), ORISE further identified which research was conducted at national level facilities worldwide and the name of the facilities used and their geographic locations.

This data allows further analysis of which type facilities have been used, and which countries are conducting the research in each of the areas. This data provided to the subcommittee will allow them to complete their report due to the BESAC Advisory Committee no later than July 31, 2021. Upon completion of the research, Dr. Jeffrey Burnham Miller (subcommittee member) stated: “Thank you again. This data has become a critical part of the report!”