Starting 2010, there will be changes to Times Higher Education’s annual World University Rankings (read here).
Some interesting items for reading pleasure:
(Going Global 4)In my previous blog entry on the “Quality of Journal Publication“, I have discussed WoS, Scopus and the ERA.
Another useful source for academics to assess journal quality is provided by Professor Anne-Wil Harzing at her website. Prof Anne-Wil has compiled the Journal Quality List, which is now in its 36th edition (the zip file can also be downloaded here).
A quick link is provided below to other relevant resources on journal quality at Prof Anne-Wil’s website:
The nominations for the National Academic Awards 2009, which recognizes successful academicians in their respective fields, are now open until May 17, 2010 (for details, click here). Briefly, there are six categories to be presented,
The above awards are several positive initiatives taken by the Higher Education Ministry to transform Malaysian universities into world-class institutions.
In this short article, I would like to share my personal views on the Journal Article Publication Award. The minimum criterion is very clear, i.e. journals listed in the top 10% of impact factor in each discipline (for Sciences), and in the top 15% of impact factor in each discipline (for Social Sciences).
The criterion adopted is quite fair because:
In 2008, there were 6,620 journals indexed in the JCR Science Edition, and the top-ranked journal CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians garnered an impact factor of 74.575. In fact, 52 science journals have impact factor greater than 16.
In sharp contrast, there were only 1,985 journals in the JCR Social Sciences Edition 2008. The impact factor for the top-ranked Annual Review of Psychology was 16.217. About 1100 journals have impact factor less than 1.o, which account for 55% of the report.
In this regard, the National Academic Awards (NAA) is on the right track. The sciences are divided into 170 subject categories, and the NAA only considers journals listed in the top 10% of impact factor in each discipline. 817 journals were included in the final list (see here).
As for the social sciences, there are 59 subject categories, and only journals in the top 15% of impact factor in each discipline are selected as the minimum criterion for consideration. Even so, there were only 349 journals in the final list (see here).
I strongly believe that such recognition to academicians should be extended to the university level. If the Thomson ISI is adopted as the benchmark at the ministry level, similar exercise at the university level should also employ the above indicator. I am glad that my home university (Universiti Malaysia Sabah) is moving in the same direction. To kick-start, each article published in ISI-indexed journals for year 2008 and 2009 were rewarded with cash incentive by UMS. However, there is still much room for improvement in terms of the reward structure.
In my routine Googling, I was led to the website of Research Institutes at the University of Melbourne. The following quotes really strike me:
“research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing”
“But by definition, a university which doesn’t involve itself in research is no university at all”
If that is the definition, why then we have the classification of research university (RU)?
A quick Google search reveals that the term ‘research university’ is not new in the United States. Turning to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, research universities are defined as doctorate-granting universities. They are further classified by their level of research activity (see here and a good review):
Based on the Carnegie Classification, the four public universities designated as research universities by the Malaysian government, fall into the category of RU/VH (see also here). This is quite similar to the Group of Eight (Go8), a coalition of eight leading Australian universities which account for more than two thirds of Australian university research activity, research output and research training.
I find this article “What to do when the PhD is finished?” by Rob Hyndman is useful to staffs in LSIBF that have returned to serve the school after completing their PhD. Of course, we do not need to make a choice here. In our academic route, you will notice that Rob always emphasizes the importance of research and publications. Quoting from his words, “all you have to do is keep churning out papers every year for the rest of your working days!“.
I always remind myself and friends that PhD is just the beginning of our academic career. We need to keep on writing quality papers and consolidate our research.
In recent years, Malaysian universities have given greater weight to publication in good quality journal, especially in the four research-intensive universities (namely Universiti Malaya, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia and Universiti Sains Malaysia). At the moment, the benchmark indicators used in Malaysia are journals included in Scopus and WoS. For the former database, the list of journals can be downloaded directly from here (click for Excel file), while the latter requires subscription (which UMS Library did subscribe).
In Australia, discipline-specific journal ranking lists have been compiled at the national level to evaluate the quality of journal publication. The list compiled under the ERA initiative is available here (click for Excel file).