Daily Archives: September 3, 2010

LSIBF in ISI/WoS

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Given the emphasis on publications in ISI/WoS, it is good to check the performance of LSIBF. To do an institutional search in WoS (click here), we have to search for “Labuan Sch Int Business & Finance”  in “Address”. This will return 13 records (click here).

How about the School of Business and Economics (SBE) in the main campus? To do that, we have to search for “Sch Business & Econ” in “Address” AND “Univ Malaysia Sabah” in “Address”. This will return 5 records (click here). If we exclude proceeding papers, SBE will only have 3 records.

Despite the lack of research facilities and the small number of academic staffs (no full professor in LSIBF), LSIBF is publishing more ISI publications than their sister school in the main campus.

Well done and keep up the good work.


Academic Advice from Sanjiv Das

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I came across the blog of Sanjiv Das after reading his 2007 paper published in Management Science (click here).

I find that his posting on “Need PhD?” provides some useful thoughts for early career researchers, prospective PhD students, and academics in general (click here).

I like the concluding remark: “If you “know” that you enjoy research and will love teaching, don’t mind working all the time, anytime, for small money but great personal satisfaction, then sign up now. But don’t do it because you think the lifestyle is great, or you believe some rosy picture of an academic in an ivory tower“.

Enjoy your reading!

UM III: Clear Promotion Criteria

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I am a strong advocate of a clear promotion criteria for academics. As pointed out by Kim et al. (2009: 354), the higher education sector is one of those knowledge-based industries in which individual productivity is recognizable and individual reputation is important.  Academics are always promoted based on their research output in recognition for their contribution to academia

What I mean by clear promotion criteria is that they should be objective and measurable. I would like to use University Malaya as a case study (click here for the full audit report).

UM has outlined her target of being ranked in the World’s Top 200 within 2 years and the World’s Top 100 within 5 years. To achieve that, the Vice Chancellor has outlined his strategic plans in the above report, and also the website of the Office of VC (click here). In terms of academic promotion criteria, it is clear that research productivity is rewarded by the university (see slides 12-14). More importantly, the criteria are objective and measurable, for instance 1) the number of citations; 2) h-index of researcher; 3) publications in Tier 1 and Tier journals.


UM II: A Model of Reward Structure for ISI/WoS Publications

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In my previous posting on National Academic Award (click here), I noted there is still much room for improvement in terms of the reward structure offered by my home university.

When designing a reward structure based on ISI/WoS (Web of Science) publications, it is important to first understand the underlying mechanisms. Several important points are highlighted here:

  1. Sciences, social sciences, and arts & humanities are three different fields that cannot be put together (for details, click here). It just does not make sense to compare the impact factor of a science journal vs a social science journal.
  2. Even in the same field (sciences, social sciences, arts & humanities), the impact factor should be discipline-specific (for details, click here).
  3. Is the reward structure based on publications indexed in WoS or impact factor reported by Journal Citation Reports (JCR)? UM encourages her staffs to publish in journals indexed in ISI-WoS, which consists of 3 important components- Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (click here for notice dated 10/8/2010, and here for WoS fact sheet). However, if the reward structure is based on impact factor, one has to bear in mind that JCR only provide impact factors for journals indexed in SCI and SSCI, but not AHCI (click here and here). How do you then reward those staffs who publish in AHCI if the incentive is structured around impact factor?
  4. How do we define high impact journals? Well, not all journals indexed by ISI-WoS are considered high impact. UM defines high impact research as any research that could produce publications in Tier 1 or Tier 2 ISI/WoS journals (click here).  I suppose it is Q1 and Q2 in the JCR.
  5. The next related question is whether the university rewards publications indexed in ISI-WoS or just high impact journals. UM has structured her reward system according to ISI Journal Tiering, that is Q1- RM6000, Q2- RM4000, Q3- RM2000 and Q4- RM1000 (click here). Apart from that, the university has also announced a cash incentive of RM50,000 for each publication in Science or Nature (click here). This is a good model, not only in monetary terms but also in ensuring fairness across disciplines.