The University of Glasgow and Lancaster University have become the latest in a growing number of universities around the world to adopt the text analytics software tool Leximancer. The universities are using Leximancer to support their qualitative research activities.

Leximancer is the product of Australian software company, Leximancer. The core technology was created at The University of Queensland in the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences by Dr Andrew Smith who is now the company’s Chief Scientist.

Although Leximancer has been primarily focused on its growing commercial customer base in industry and government, it has continued to offer special pricing to academic institutions and support university-based research using unstructured data.

“It is very gratifying that software generated through university research is becoming an increasingly important component of research efforts in many disciplines across multiple universities,” Dr Smith said.

“In the past two months, the University of Glasgow, Lancaster University and the Australian Catholic University have joined the National University of Singapore and six other Australian universities in obtaining university-wide licences to use Leximancer.”

Individual Leximancer users are located in over 100 academic institutions spread throughout Australia, Asia, Europe and North America.

According to Google Scholar, 149 academic papers mentioning Leximancer have been published in journals as diverse as the Harvard Business Review and the European Journal of Dental Education since January 2010.

Leximancer General Manager, Mac Exon-Taylor said Leximancer’s ability to provide true, unbiased discovery appealed to academics and other users working in research.

“Academic staff are very discerning and exacting customers,” Mr Exon-Tayl or said.

“Our academic customers ensure that we continue to provide a product that is based on leading edge science and provides results capable of independent validation,” he said.