What went missing in the above project paper was a benchmarking exercise in which the research performance of UMS is compared against the leaders. It is indisputable that UM, USM, UKM and UPM are the top 4 universities in Malaysia. To conduct a comparative analysis, I follow the recent trend to define research quality in terms of publications in journals indexed by Thomson ISI/WoS.

The analysis proceeds as follows:

• Access Web of Knowledge via institutional login (click here);
• Search “Univ Malaysia Sabah” in Address;
• Set Timespan = All Years;
• Set Databases = SCI-Expanded, SSCI (since most universities are interested in those journals with impact factors).

The process is repeated for “Univ Malaya”, “Univ Sains Malaysia”, “Univ Kebangsaan Malaysia”, “Univ Putra Malaysia”. The results are summarized in the attached table and figure (for raw data, click here). It is worth highlighting that those numbers represent the lower bound as there could be missing data. For instance, some researchers might report their affiliations as “Malaysian University of Sabah” (instead of “Universiti Malaysia Sabah) or “National University of Malaysia” (in place of “Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia”).

The statistics clearly show that the research output for the top four universities has improved significantly in the last 3 years of the sample period. Notably, UM and USM were able to break the ‘resistance level’ of 1000 in 2009-2011. Even though no formal analysis is conducted, I have no doubt that the financial incentive introduced by these RUs is a key determinant (click here, here, here). Drawing from the literature, Heywood et al. (2011) exploit a unique setting at The Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE) where the piece rate for peer-reviewed articles increases five-fold. They report a significant 50% increase in research productivity associated with the piece rate increase. However, the scheme appears to raise the productivity of those who were already research active but does not motivate the research inactive to publish.

Coming back to UMS, the university’s total publications over the past 14 years are less than the annual productivity of these RUs. If UMS were to introduce the same reward structure, it would require a huge financial allocation. For instance, a simple calculation for UM shows that the university spent about RM3 million for publication incentive (assuming average piece rate of RM3000 and annual productivity of 1000 articles). Given the financial constraint, what UMS needs to do is to identify the threshold point above which the scheme will provide the desired incentive effect (for example of threshold analysis, see Hansen, 2000). I am sure that this threshold level won’t be RM100 per article (coming soon)!

I have contributed 4 articles as follows:

• Kian-Ping Lim (2005) New theoretical light for technical analysis, The Technical Analyst, 9 (March/April), 38-39. 

• Kian-Ping Lim (2004) When does technical analysis work …and when doesn’t it? The Technical Analyst, 6 (September/October), 36-38.

• Kian-Ping Lim and Venus Khim-Sen Liew (2004) Nonlinearity favours nonlinear TA techniques, The Technical Analyst, 4 (May), 38-40.

• Venus Khim-Sen Liew, Kian-Ping Lim and Chee-Keong Choong (2004) South-East Asian stock markets follow a non-random walk, The Technical Analyst, 2 (March), 38-39.

It is indeed a good learning experience for me in writing non-technical articles. A sample can be downloaded here.

To submit a request for data change, you can directly fill in this online form (click here). The entire data change process took about three weeks, and the error has finally been rectified.

I have recommended this software even to my undergraduate students, and they found it perfect for group projects. Dropbox also received good reviews from Prof Rob Hyndman (see here, here and here).

Do you still need more time to consider?

If you are using someone else computer, you still can access your files as long as there is internet connection

If you are working at home (iMac), office (PC) or traveling (Netbook), you can sync them via Dropbox

You can share your folders with colleagues, students or collaborators

Dropbox folders in my iMac

Sharing your folders with others via Dropbox

It then prompted me to find out how significant my contribution is to my home university’s publications in ISI/WoS. To do that, I proceed as follows:

• Access Web of Knowledge via institutional login (click here);
• Search “Univ Malaysia Sabah” in Address;
• Set Timespan = All Years;
• Set Databases = SCI-Expanded, SSCI (since most universities are interested in those journals with impact factors).

The search results then display 519 documents, which comprises of 456 articles, 29 meeting abstracts, 24 proceedings papers, 21 reviews, 9 editorial materials, and 3 letters. This number is really meager (you can compute the number of article per staff per year) if the university aspires to be a Research University (I will do an analysis for other RUs in future posting- Now available, click here)

Next, I perform a simple analysis based on authors (and quantities). I am ranked 18 (not exactly as there are 5 authors with the same number). My ranking will improve as I have 5 papers not yet recorded by Web of Knowledge (click here for my in press/forthcoming papers). It is indeed shocking to learn that I am the top contributor in the social sciences category as recorded by SSCI, considering that I am still a senior lecturer.

I have dedicated a separate page for monthly updates on the top 25 authors in UMS (click here).

I just came across the beta version of Microsoft Academic Search Engine (click here). It has a number of cool features. Personally, I like the ranking lists based on citations, h-index and G-index (see here).

Enjoy your exploration!!

]]> http://kianpinglim.com/researchnews/2011/12/microsoft-academic-search-engine/feed/ 0 http://kianpinglim.com/researchnews/2011/12/my-top-25-hottest-articles/ http://kianpinglim.com/researchnews/2011/12/my-top-25-hottest-articles/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 03:29:14 +0000 kianping http://kianpinglim.com/researchnews/?p=645 My paper entitled “Financial crisis and stock market efficiency: empirical evidence from Asian countries” (co-authored with Robert Brooks and Jae Kim) has been listed ScienceDirect Top 25 Hottest Articles in International Review of Financial Analysis for more than 4 years. Notably, the paper occupied the top spot for four consecutive quarters since Oct-Dec 2008.