Academic administration

Research Newsletter 2020

As we wrap up this most challenging year, I want to emphasize how grateful and humbled I am with the response of BIs faculty and staff to the radical disruptions in the life of our business school and the personal lives caused by COVID-19, and the stress that we have all been under as a result. I am grateful and appreciate all the hard work, the collaborative spirit, and the sheer determination it took to do something as monumental as moving the entire teaching enterprise to a digital format, in just a few days.

Given that COVID-19 has dominated our day-to-day professional and personal lives, it is easy to lose sight of other important news related to research and research related activities and support. It is a great pleasure for me to note that in 2020 BIs faculty has continued to make an increasing impact also in research.

Some highlights from the 2020 activities:

The results of the 2019 Norwegian Scientific Index for publications were finalized in April 2020 and BI’s researchers have once again performed very strongly. We have succeeded in publishing a record-high percentage of articles in journals at Level 2. BI also registered a record-high percentage of publications co-authored with international collaborators. so this is great news.
For the first time we have mapped the relevance of BI’s research to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Report on Sustainability Research show that sustainability is an important component of the academic output of BI: 25% of all publications have contributed to at least one of the SDGs. Moreover, 30% of BI faculty publishing in this period have published on topics related to sustainability, and all eight departments were represented. Furthermore, 40% of the relevant journal articles are published in ABS ranked journals rank 3 or higher.
BI had publications relevant to all 17 SDGs. The top three SDG goals that BI’s academic work has contributed the most:

SDG 3 – Good health and well-being
SDG 16 – Peace, justice and strong institutions
SDG 17 – Partnership for the goals.

This year has proven to be very successful for attracting external research funding to BI. In total, BI’s faculty has received over 57 MNOK in funding for research projects from the Research Council of Norway alone, including projects where BI is project owner and partner. Congratulations to all!
BI Norwegian Business school has decided to strengthen relevant research capacity in data science, so as to provide additional courses/programs in data science/business analytics etc. This is best achieved by setting up a Department of Data Science and Analytics. BI has also signed a memorandum of understanding with Simula Research Laboratory to strengthen the expertise in data science through collaboration related to research. You can read more here.

Hilde C. Bjørnland

- Provost Research and Academic Resources