The presentation and the assessment of academic and research activities, collaborations and performance are crucial for Universities, as well as for all the involved stakeholders. We propose a system that complements VIVO and introduces to it additional decision support capabilities, which allow making deductions about the conducted research quality and quantity at any level within the institution. Our academic evaluation approach builds upon VIVO and includes an elaborate research management information component that is called IREMA, which focused on the individual researchers’ performance, as well as the formed research networks, within an academic institution, and a multidimensional ontology-based visual ranking component, the AcademIS, which evaluates and ranks the performance of academic units, ranging from academic departments and faculties to whole universities. Our approach is implemented in a Greek University, namely the University of West Attica.
The described method builds upon VIVO ontology, which extends in order to cover the concepts of academic evaluation, and thus facilitates the required information for all the components of our system. Our method integrates visual analytics, in order to assist the users to understand effortlessly the presented information and make more informed decisions.