A talk aimed at staff of the School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury. May be of interest to some others too.

1. Raising academic profiles with online resources
Paul Gardner
May 8, 2014
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

2. Motivation: QS rankings
March 2014 report by Warren Smart,
Ministry of Education.
Summarises the performance of NZ
universities across the ARWU, QS and
THE rankings.
International student scholarships are
limited to top 200 universities by some
agencies.
http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/tertiary education/145981
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

3. Motivation: QS rankings
QS is the most widely used & cited ranking
Based upon arbitrary weighting of 6 metrics
Z-scores → “P-values”
High density ouside the tails of the normal distributions →
small changes can have a large impact
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

4. Motivation: QS rankings
NZ university rankings
Year
QSworldranking
Auckland − 94
Otago − 155
Canterbury − 238
Victoria − 265
Massey − 343
Waikato: 401−410
Lincoln: 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

5. Motivation: QS rankings
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

6. Motivation: QS rankings
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

7. Motivation: UC citations
0 500 1000 1500 2000
0
100
200
300
400
500
Number of citations per UC article (2008−2012)
Article index
Numberofcites
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
%−ageofUCtotalcites
<20cites
<100cites
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

8. Motivation: PBRF
q
q
q
q
q
q q
q
q
q
q
q
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1234567
UC Subjects PBRF 06 vs 12 performances
AQS(N) 2006
AQS(N)2012
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_Studs
Physics
Psychology
x
National average
q
q
q
q
q
q
q
4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0
4.04.55.05.56.0
UC Department PBRF 06 vs 12 performances
AQS(N) 2006
AQS(N)2012
Chemistry
Communication_DisordersGeography
Geological_Sciences
Physics_and_Astronomy
Psychology
Biological_Sciences
x
National average
Performance-based research funding (cf. UK’s RAE)
Research outputs, contribution to research environment, and
peer esteem
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

9. Some strategies going forward
High impact articles
International collaborations (Pan, Kaski & Fortunato, 2012)
Meta-analyses (Anecdote, 2014) – see Shinichi Nakagawa
Publicise your work! Some suggestions:
Deposit data in archives (+9%, Piwowar & Vision, 2013)
Preprint archives or publish open access (+124% to +230%,
Aman, 2013)
UC library, personal webpage, arXiv, bioRxiv, figshare, ...
Check your articles are referenced on appropriate Wikipedia
articles
Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia.
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

10. More PR venues
Create a ResearchGate profile
Create a GoogleScholar profile
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

11. ResearchGate
a social networking site for scientists and researchers to share
papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators
Spam!
Undocumented “RG score”
Can upload full-text copies of their articles (pre-prints, or
modified copyright statements)
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

12. Google Scholar
A freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text
of scholarly literature
Includes most peer-reviewed online journals of Europe and
America’s largest scholarly publishers, plus scholarly books
and other non-peer reviewed journals
Import and export references in RefWorks, RefMan, EndNote
and BibTeX formats
Individual’s total citation count, h-index, and i10-index
Top citations in a field of interest can also be accessed
Alerts!
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

13. More input is welcome...
There are a variety of UC groups looking at these issues...
College/SBS Research Committees (incl. Wendy Lawson,
Ximena Nelson, Emily Parker, ...)
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
SBSAwesomeness
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

14. Some ideas
Research funding in exchange for recruiting international
students?
Subsidise trips home for our internationational staff in
exchange for UC ambassador activities?
Raise entry requirements? Provisional enrolments? Entrance
exams?
Hire more staff?
Increase the PG to UG ratios?
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources

15. Conclusion
UC is a world class university with world class staff and
students
Paul Gardner Raising academic profiles with online resources