Raising academic profiles with online resources

Paul Gardner

May 8, 2014

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

Motivation: QS rankings

I March 2014 report by Warren Smart,Ministry of Education.

I Summarises the performance of NZuniversities across the ARWU, QS andTHE rankings.

I International student scholarships arelimited to top 200 universities by someagencies.

http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/tertiary education/145981

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

Motivation: QS rankings

I QS is the most widely used & cited rankingI Based upon arbitrary weighting of 6 metricsI Z-scores → “P-values”I High density ouside the tails of the normal distributions →

small changes can have a large impact

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

Motivation: QS rankings

NZ university rankings

Year

QS

wor

ld r

anki

ng

Auckland − 94

Otago − 155

Canterbury − 238

Victoria − 265

Massey − 343

Waikato: 401−410Lincoln: 481−490

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

400

300

200

100

1

2013 H−index

0 50 100

150

200

75

96

128

111

128

203

196

2013 H6−index

0 20 40 60 80 100

40

45

67

58

67

100

112

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

Motivation: QS rankings

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

Motivation: QS rankings

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

Motivation: UC citations

0 500 1000 1500 2000

0

100

200

300

400

500

Number of citations per UC article (2008−2012)

Article index

Num

ber

of c

ites

20 cites long tail

100 cites

0 100 200 300 400 500

0

20

40

60

80

100

Cumulative %−age contribution to UC's total cites

Number of cites

%−

age

of U

C to

tal c

ites

<20

cite

s

<10

0 ci

tes

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

Motivation: PBRF

●

●

●

●

●

● ●

●

●

●

●

●

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

12

34

56

7

UC Subjects PBRF 06 vs 12 performances

AQS(N) 2006

AQ

S(N

) 20

12

Ag._&_Appld_Bio._Sci.

Biomedical

Chemistry

Earth_Sciences

Ecol.,_Evol._&_Behav.

Eng._&_Tech. For._Lang._&_Ling.

Human_Geography

Mol.,_Cell._&_Whole_Org._Bio.

Other_Health_StudsPhysics

Psychology

xNational average

●

●●

●

●

●

●

4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0

4.0

4.5

5.0

5.5

6.0

UC Department PBRF 06 vs 12 performances

AQS(N) 2006

AQ

S(N

) 20

12

Chemistry

Communication_DisordersGeography

Geological_Sciences

Physics_and_Astronomy

Psychology

Biological_Sciences

xNational average

I Performance-based research funding (cf. UK’s RAE)I Research outputs, contribution to research environment, and

peer esteem

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

Some strategies going forward

I High impact articlesI International collaborations (Pan, Kaski & Fortunato, 2012)I Meta-analyses (Anecdote, 2014) – see Shinichi Nakagawa

I Publicise your work! Some suggestions:I Deposit data in archives (+9%, Piwowar & Vision, 2013)I Preprint archives or publish open access (+124% to +230%,

Aman, 2013)I UC library, personal webpage, arXiv, bioRxiv, figshare, ...

I Check your articles are referenced on appropriate Wikipediaarticles

I Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia.

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

More PR venues

I Create a ResearchGate profile

I Create a GoogleScholar profile

I AltMetrics are used by some sources (e.g. downloads, tweets,likes, ...). ImpactStory is one venue for these.

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

ResearchGate

I a social networking site for scientists and researchers to sharepapers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators

I Spam!

I Undocumented “RG score”

I Can upload full-text copies of their articles (pre-prints, ormodified copyright statements)

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

Google Scholar

I A freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full textof scholarly literature

I Includes most peer-reviewed online journals of Europe andAmerica’s largest scholarly publishers, plus scholarly booksand other non-peer reviewed journals

I Import and export references in RefWorks, RefMan, EndNoteand BibTeX formats

I Individual’s total citation count, h-index, and i10-index

I Top citations in a field of interest can also be accessed

I Alerts!

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

More input is welcome...

I There are a variety of UC groups looking at these issues...I College/SBS Research Committees (incl. Wendy Lawson,

Ximena Nelson, Emily Parker, ...)I Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research Steve Weaver and Dean of

Postgraduate Research Lucy Johnston

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

2018

2020

800

850

900

950

1000

1050

1100

Year

SB

S A

wes

omen

ess

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

Some ideas

I Research funding in exchange for recruiting internationalstudents?

I Subsidise trips home for our internationational staff inexchange for UC ambassador activities?

I Raise entry requirements? Provisional enrolments? Entranceexams?

I Hire more staff?

I Increase the PG to UG ratios?

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

Conclusion

I UC is a world class university with world class staff andstudents

Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources