Impact Factors, Citations and the h-index

As impact factors, citation analyses and the 'h-index' are used increasingly to measure research impact (see last week's post on university rankings), it is worth posting a reminder of what these are and of how the measurements are made.

Journal Impact Factors
Journal impact factors provide an objective measurement for differentiating between journals by measuring the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. An impact factor of 1.5 for a journal would mean that, on average, articles published in that journal during the previous two years have been cited 1.5 times. In the University of Limerick you can find a journal's impact factor in ISI's Journal Citation Reports (see the library list of databases).

Citation Analysis
A citation analysis measures the number of times an author, article, journal or institution is cited in academic literature. In the University of Limerick a citation analysis can be done in ISI's Web of Science (see the library list of databases). Do a search for the author, giving 'Univ Limerick' as the address. At the top right of your results list click 'Create Citation Report'. The citation report will provide graphs and statistics of the author's publication and citation trend, including the average number of times an item has been cited.

h-index
Included in the Web of Science citation report, the h-index reflects both the number of publications and the number of citations per publication. A h-index of h signifies that the author has published h papers each of which has been cited at least h times. So, for example, a h-index of 4 signifies that the author has published 4 papers each of which has been cited at least 4 times. The author may in fact have published 5 or even 100 papers, but papers 5 -100 have less than 4 citations and are therefore discounted. For further information on the h-index see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirsch_number

Rankings using the measures above are based on the premise that if an academic or institution shows good citation metrics, it is very likely that the academic or institution has made a significant impact on the academic world. However, it is important to note that the reverse is not necessarily true and that an academic or institution with weak citation metrics may, for example, be working in a small field, publishing in a language other than English, or publishing mainly in books.

Don't devalue the insight or 'What are the humanities for?'

John Armstrong, philosopher in residence at the Melbourne Business School, argues that the answering of the question in the title above has serious implications for how the humanities are studied, how they are funded and how their success – or failure – is measured.
While the choice politically often seems to be whether to a) honour (and fund) the humanities for their own sake or b) demand that the humanities contribute something more tangible to society, Armstrong suggests that both sides have something to offer.
The mistake, says Armstrong, has been to look for a side benefit (e.g. studying Latin helps you to deal with abstractions) and then to try to justify a whole discipline on that slender basis.
Instead we should look to life's most difficult practical questions - 'What are we really trying to accomplish and why, in the long run, would it be so good to do that?’ - and at how a discipline helps us to answer those questions. What is it that is of intrinsic benefit?
The humanities, Armstrong concludes, become more practical not by disavowing their core concerns but by understanding them more clearly and by seeing them as being in the service of life, not in the service of academics.

Link to the full The Australian article

Leading from the front: SFI’s Frank Gannon

Dick Ahlstrom in the Irish Times this week reminded us that even with the economy tanked and the filleting knife out for virtually every State programme, the science budget has so far remained intact. Frank Gannon, Director General of SFI since 2007, has had no small part to play in this.

"Careful lobbying by Gannon and others has helped keep the Government onside", writes Ahlstrom, "and allowed them to 'hold their nerve' through these difficult times. The highest levels of Government remain committed to the 'smart economy', believing that our engagement with scientific research will help pull us out of recession when the tide finally turns."

Gannon outlined just why we need to remain committed to the smart economy at the launch on March 25th this year of Powering the Smart Economy, SFI Strategy 2009-2013:

"While most of the focus in economic commentaries of late has, understandably, been on the short-term, it is essential that we prepare for the new global environment that will exist after this recession. We need to look closely and critically at how Ireland will then be positioned after the recovery. Ireland will have to be able to win exports by being the location from where new, essential and complex products originate. This can only happen if we give the necessary support, even in these difficult times to our high quality research and development. The realisation of the interdependent objectives set out in the strategy will deliver the basis for a prosperous and sustainable smart economy."

Link to the full Irish Times article
Link to Powering the Smart Economy, SFI Strategy 2009-2013
Link to SFI Press Release, March 25th 2009

The book everyone wishes they’d written

Times Higher Education today launched a new series where leading scholars explain which books they believe are definitive in their field. Writers were asked to choose a key text that “defined their subject, set their personal academic agendas or even changed their lives.”

This week’s books are from disciplines ranging from anthropology and architecture to social policy and international relations. It is anticipated that in time the weekly series will cover most of the academic landscape.

CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON by Immanuel Kant
Recommended and reviewed by Simon Blackburn, professor of philosophy, University of Cambridge.
Available in UL Library at 121/KAN

THE SECOND SEX by Simone de Beauvoir
Recommended and reviewed by Mary Evans, visiting fellow, Gender Institute, London School of Economics.
Available in UL Library at 305.42

A PHENOMENOLOGY OF LANDSCAPE: PLACES, PATHS AND MONUMENTS by Christopher Tilley
Recommended and reviewed by Timothy Darvill, professor of archaeology and director of the Centre for Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage, Bournemouth University.
Available in UL Library at 936.29/TIL

THE GREEKS AND THE IRRATIONAL by E. R. Dodds
Recommended and reviewed by Mary Beard, professor of Classics, Newnham College, Cambridge.
Available through UL Library as an e-book

ANTHROPOLOGIE ECONOMIQUE DES GOURO DE COTE D'IVOIRE by Claude Meillassoux
Recommended and reviewed by Jeremy Keenan, professorial research associate, department of social anthropology and sociology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
Available as an inter-library loan

ON WAR by Carl von Clausewitz
Recommended and reviewed by Alex Danchev, professor of international relations, University of Nottingham. His latest book is On Art and War and Terror (2009).
Available in UL Library at 355

THE USES OF LITERACY by Richard Hoggart
Recommended and reviewed by Fred Inglis, emeritus professor of cultural studies, University of Sheffield.
Available in UL Library at 302.22440941/HOG

THE NAZI SEIZURE OF POWER: THE EXPERIENCE OF A SINGLE GERMAN TOWN 1922-1945 by William Sheridan Allen
Recommended and reviewed by Richard Evans, Regius professor of modern history, University of Cambridge.
Available in UL Library at Store 943.085/ALL

LEVIATHAN by Thomas Hobbes
Recommended and reviewed by Alan Ryan, warden of New College, Oxford.
Available in UL Library at 320.1

GENDER TROUBLE by Judith Butler
Recommended and reviewed by Lynne Segal, professor of psychology and gender studies, Birkbeck, University of London.
Available in UL Library at 305.3/BUT

THE EYES OF THE SKIN: ARCHITECTURE AND THE SENSES by Juhani Pallasmaa
Recommended and reviewed by Flora Samuel, reader in architecture, University of Bath.
Available in UL Library at 720.1

ON RELIGION: SPEECHES TO ITS CULTURED DESPISERS by Friedrich Schleiermacher
Recommended and reviewed by Keith Ward, Regius professor of divinity emeritus, University of Oxford.
Available at Mary Immaculate Library at 200/SCH

THE PRESENTATION OF SELF IN EVERYDAY LIFE by Erving Goffman
Recommended and reviewed by Anthony Giddens, Labour peer in the House of Lords.
Available in UL Library at 302

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: THE BORDERS OF VISION by Jonathan Wordsworth
Recommended and reviewed by Duncan Wu, professor in the English department, Georgetown University.
Available as an inter-library loan

OF GRAMMATOLOGY by Jacques Derrida, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Recommended and reviewed by Derek Attridge, professor of English at the University of York.
Available in UL Library at 401

THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES VOLUME VII: THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST AND MONEY by John Maynard Keynes
Recommended and reviewed by Michelle Baddeley, fellow, college lecturer and director of studies in economics, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
Available in UL Library at 330.156

COURS DE LINGUISTIQUE GENERALE by Ferdinand de Saussure
Recommended and reviewed by Roy Harris, emeritus professor of general linguistics, University of Oxford.
Available in UL Library at 410

ORIENTALISM by Edward Said
Recommended and reviewed by Claire Chambers is senior lecturer in postcolonial literature, Leeds Metropolitan University.
Available in UL Library at 950.07

Click here for the full Times Higher Education article, including reviews of the books listed.

SFI and Open Access

From 1 February 2009 Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) joined with other research funders worldwide to mandate that research publications arising in whole or in part from their funding must be lodged in an open access repository as soon as possible (maximum 6 months) after publication. See funder policies here.

The SFI policy
• confirms the freedom of researchers to publish first wherever they feel is the most appropriate.
• allows that the protection of intellectual property arising from the publication takes precedence over open access depositing and indeed over any form of publication.
• recommends that institutional and disciplinary repositories should be used in preference to an author’s own website.
• specifies that the publication to be deposited is to be the publisher’s version, if permitted, or the author’s final version. See publisher permissions here.
• Where a publisher charges an author to enable open access, SFI will allow this as an Eligible Cost and it should be charged against the Miscellaneous budget line. See publisher charges here.

Because authors prefer the publisher copy to the ‘author’s own’ version allowed by most publishers, there is a natural reluctance to lodge work in an open access repository. However, policies like the one above make the necessity for some culture shifts in interactions between authors, publishers and librarians clear.

UL researchers can meet the SFI requirement by lodging their work in the University of Limerick Institutional Repository (ULIR).

University rankings don't tell the whole story

Prof Ellen Hazelkorn, Director of Research and Enterprise at Dublin Institute of Technology and leader of the Higher Education Policy Research Unit (HEPRU), argues in this Irish Times article that too much focus on global rankings means that we risk transforming our higher education system to conform to metrics designed for other purposes.

Professor Hazelkorn looks at the various rankings, including the Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities (SJT), the Times QS World University Ranking and the Taiwan Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for Research Universities, and concludes that sometimes “global rankings focus on what is easily measured rather than measuring what counts”.

Stressing that “it is the total investment that is important”, she recommends that Ireland could usefully look to Australia and to Norway for models which recognise and reward excellence wherever it occurs, developing benchmarks which reflect our societal and innovation needs and assessing performance accordingly.

Links to Rankings information
Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities (SJT)
Times QS World University Ranking
Webometrics – Ranking Web of World Universities
Wikipedia – College and University Rankings

Australia - the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative
Norway - the Stjerno Commission

Link to the full Irish Times article

Brush up your writing skills if you want to get published

At a Society for Research into Higher Education workshop on "Academic Writing Skills and Getting Published", session leaders stressed the need for new academics to develop good writing habits.

Simon Lygo-Baker of King's College London said that while researchers must get used to the fact that rejection by leading journals is the norm, they should also be aware that many rejected submissions don’t make the cut not because of a fault in the research, but because the submissions read like drafts rather than final papers. Scholars who apply some of the basic principles of good writing, including principles generally seen to apply to other forms of writing, will be putting themselves ahead of the game.

Academics are no different from other writers in their need for people to read and to remember what they write, said Lygo-Baker, and so they should “Give readers a hook or incentive at the start to grab their attention and get them involved” and “Summarise your central claim at the end, so that people take away something concrete."

Some basic principles of academic writing that Lygo-Baker said editors find to be too often forgotten include the need to pay attention to the style of a particular journal, to get to the point as succintly as possible, while addressing the major theoretical issues, and to offer conclusions that clearly arise from what has gone before. And of course, the work must be relevant or, as a reader of the article remarks online, “The best way to get published is to produce good work.”

Dr Rowena Murray of the University of Strathclyde was anxious to get the new academics at the workshop writing, stressing the importance of scholars being able to write on demand, of getting into the habit of grabbing any spare time and using it to write. She demonstrated how "writing to prompts" can help people to develop the behavioural techniques to get them started as academic writers, and how drawing consciously, for example, on set phrases such as "Some will argue that ..." or "Possible interpretations include ... " can help writers to package research in the most appropriate way.

So ... If you want to be an effective and productive writer, you should start writing now - just don’t let your first draft be your last.

Link to the full Times Higher Education article