When I was preparing a module on “Publishing in High Impact Journal” , my google search directed me to the website of UM Vice Chancellor Office (click here). I am really impressed by their focus on research excellence, in particularly their strong drive for ISI/WoS publications.

In a notice posted on 16/4/2010 (click here), UM VC has announced a new reward for publication in Science or Nature, i.e. a monetary reward of RM50,000 per paper. This is similar to the incentive given by Badminton Association of Malaysia for World Championships gold (click here or here). The most attractive part is that there is no limit to the number of paper one can claim, provided that UM academic staff is the first author. This incentive will surely motivate their staffs to publish in high quality journals.

As a Malaysian, I am glad to learn that UM is moving in the right direction, and hope that the university will one day be ranked among the top 100 leading universities in international rankings.

“Area of Expertise”  refers to the area where one is a specialist in knowledge of and an authority on information in that particular area. In academia, professors are generally regarded as the qualified experts, because they are supposed to be promoted primarily on the basis of their research achievements.

When I was the managing editor of Labuan Bulletin of International Business and Finance, I often need to seek the expertise opinion of  a referee to evaluate the contribution of the submitted manuscript. To find the suitable referee, I would use Google Scholar, Scopus or ISI/WoS. Sometimes, I found that some professors in my discipline did not have many publications in the area they were supposed to profess. At the other extreme, there were some academics who have published extensively in a particular area yet did not even have a PhD. When such situation arose, I often opted for the latter. In my view, a solid publication record is a necessary (or even a sufficient) condition for an academic to be labeled as “expert”.

After returning to Malaysia, I often heard academics with PhD claimed that their “area of expertise” is XXX.  Again, a PhD does not qualify one to be an expert. It is just a recognition that the successful candidate has proven his/her ability to conduct independent research, and that the PhD thesis materials are publishable (sometimes, due to varying reasons, the potential of publishable never fulfilled).  A 3-4 year of rigorous PhD training helps the candidate  to develop an area of specialization, but he/she still needs to further research and publish before that area becomes his/her “area of expertise”. Even someone without PhD can become an expert  in his field, as long as he has solid publication records.

I always look up to John Creedy, the Truby Williams Professor of Economics at the University of Melbourne (check his bio here). In terms of academic qualifications, Prof. John Creedy has a B.Sc. (Economics with Statistics) from the University of Bristol, and a B.Phil. (Economics) from Oxford University. A quick check of his CV reveals that he was promoted to Professor of Economics at Durham University in 1978, 6 years after he obtained his B.Phil. Even without master and PhD degrees, Prof. John Creedy is widely regarded as an expert in economics. His excellent publication records include  32 books, 17 edited books,  54 book chapters, and 234 journal articles. He is often ranked as the top economist in Australia (see, for example, Macri and Sinha, 2006, and references cited therein).

Starting 2010, there will be changes to Times Higher Education’s annual World University Rankings (read here).

Some interesting items for  reading pleasure:

1. Flawed rankings (The STAR)
2. Call for ‘time out’ (The STAR)
3. League tables: flawed rankings or key benchmarks? (Going Global 4)
4. League table exposed (USM)
5. Ranking confession (Inside Higher Ed)
6. Back to square one on the rankings front (The Australian)
7. Leagues apart (The Economist)

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:

1. Academic publishing resources
2. Quality and impact of academic research
3. Publish or perish

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,

1. National Academic Personality Award
2. Journal Article Publication Award
3. Book Publication Award
4. Innovation and Product Commercialization Award
5. Arts and Creativity Award
6. Teaching Award

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:

• Sciences and social sciences are two different fields that cannot be put together.

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.

• Even in the same field (sciences or social sciences), the impact factor should be discipline-specific.

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):

• RU/VH: Research Universities (very high research activity)
• RU/H: Research Universities (high research activity)
• DRU: Doctoral/Research Universities

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.

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).