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Welcome to the Dimensions BigQuery Lab!

This site and its related Github repository contain a collection of tutorials and queries showing how to carry out common research data analytics tasks using the Dimensions database on Google BigQuery (GBQ).

Note

Dimensions is a comprehensive database for the research & innovation ecosystem, used by governments, universities, businesses, funders and investors around the world. It is a structured, linked database containing trillions of data points about the research landscape, organized in tables e.g. research organizations, publications, patents, grants, clinical trials and more.

You can use the structured code examples on this site to put together analyses for specific use cases e.g.

  • Competitive intelligence
  • Horizon-scanning & emerging trends
  • Academic & industry partnerships and collaboration networks
  • Key Opinion Leader (KOL) identification
  • Recruitment & talent
  • Performance & benchmarking
  • Tracking funding dollar flows and citation patterns
  • Social and economic impact of research

Get started now, fast and for free

If you haven’t used Dimensions on BigQuery before, you can get started now for free. This video will show you how to set up Google cloud, run a query and do a visualization with our trial dataset - all in 5 minutes.

Following the steps in the video above gives you access to our sandbox environment. This contains all Dimensions data related to COVID-19. It has the same data structure as the full Dimensions database and is updated on a daily basis.

Note

Access to the full Dimensions dataset on Google BigQuery is subscription-only: you or your organization needs to subscribe for you to gain access to the full dataset. Get in touch here.

How to use this Lab

The Lab is designed for learning and inspiration. It demonstrates how to query BigQuery according to best practices, how to work with the Dimensions data structure, and how to do core analytical tasks. As you become more experienced with the data, you will want to combine these building blocks into more complex analyses that answer your business or research questions.

The materials in this Lab can be navigated sequentially, or you can use the search box above to enter a keyword and see matching documents.

There are three main sections:

  • The Tutorials section contains guides that focus on specific topics or use cases e.g. how to deal with a specific data type, or how to use GBQ in combination with other technologies.
  • The Collections section contains thematic groupings of queries based on application scenarios (e.g. citation analysis).
  • The Queries section is an archive of reusable SQL queries together with an explanation of what they do.

Finding out more

Find out more about Dimensions on BigQuery with the following resources: * The Dimensions BigQuery homepage is the place to start from if you’ve never heard about Dimensions on GBQ. * The Dimensions on BigQuery official documentation contains detailed data model information, tutorials on how to sign up and how to access it using tools like Data Studio and Tableau. * The BigQuery Lab Github repository contains the source code for all the materials on this website, and more.

Video tutorials

The Dimensions YouTube channel contains various how-to videos like this one: Dimensions on Google BigQuery - what it is and how to get started with it:

Changelog

See the CHANGELOG.md file on Github.