UzhNU awards its best researchers
Being at the top positions of Scopus – an abstract and citation database and Elsevier publishing corporation scientometric platform - is extremely prestigious for scientists and universities. Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Ihor Studenyak, Vice-rector of Uzhhorod National University, recently returned from the workshop held by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine "Scientometric databases as implementation tools of research and technological potential in the context of integration into the European research area". Our conversation was about the importance of being at the top positions of Scopus and the position of our university in it?
- What does Scopus database impact researchers and universities?
Scientific research is an important component of university development. In turn, the publication of research results in journals that are indexed and abstracted by Scopus enables to raise individual scientists’ indicators (number of articles, number of citations, h-index) and, correspondingly, the indicators of the university in the world rankings. Scopus database allows you to analyze publication activity by the following indicators:
- distribution of articles by branches of knowledge;
- total number of published articles and papers by years;
- the list of authors who have published the biggest number of articles;
- the list of the most cited articles;
- percentage of self citation in the most popular articles;
- the list of the journals in which researchers actively publish results of their research;
- the list of universities whose employees are the co-authors of investigated universities.
This database contained over 50 million abstracts at the end of 2013. In general, Scopus is divided into four areas: 41% of the data volume is made up of natural sciences (manufacturing, power engineering, computer science, mathematics, materials science, the science of the Earth and planets, astronomy, physics, chemical engineering and chemistry); 40% - medical sciences; 24% - sciences about life (biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, immunology and microbiology, environmental science, neuroscience, agricultural and biological sciences), and 12% - social and humanitarian sciences (business, management and accounting, economics, econometrics and finance, art and humanities, psychology, social sciences and decision making theories).
- How can scientists’ works reach the top positions in the ranking?
In order to improve scientometric indicators of the university and individual scientists’ positions in rankings it is important to meet a number of requirements. In particular, research results published in the articles must be topical and relevant to modern science, it will positively impact the quotation of such works. In order to increase the performance of individual scientists it is advisable for them join groups of authors which include foreign scientists with relatively high h-index.
Research results should be published in top-rated foreign journals with SNIP value over 1.5-2. Thus, it is more likely that the article will be reviewed and cited by other scientists. One way to draw attention to the issue under research and find a foreign researcher doing similar research is to register in scientific communities such as LinkedIn, ResearchGate, Google Scholar and others.
- Scientific editions of which countries are the most frequently cited ones according to Scopus and what is the position of Ukrainian universities in the database?
47% of the indexed editions are published in Western Europe, 33% - in North America, 9% of the editions are from the Asia-Pacific region, 2% of editions come from Australia and Oceania, Africa and South America and 5% are produced by the Eastern European publishers (37 titles of Ukrainian journals are included into this number).
As to the data of Ukrainian editions and researchers, the scientometric database SciVerse Scopus contains the following ratings: the rating of employees of scientific institutions of Ukraine, which are updated monthly; the rating of scientists of Ukraine (total and by areas); the rating of young scientists of Ukraine and also the rating of Ukrainian institutions. These ratings are developed by Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. The criteria are the number of articles in Scopus, the number of citations in Scopus and Hirsch index (h-index).
What are the positions of UzhNU in Scopus?
According to SciVerse Scopus database as of July 16, 2015 (the latest update) UzhNU occupies the 13th place among higher educational institutions of Ukraine (the number of publications is 1498, the number of citations in Scopus is 5273 and Hirsch index is 27).
By the way, an international exhibition "Education and Career - Student's Day 2015" was held in Kyiv on November 12-14, 2015. It was organized by the MES of Ukraine and the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine. Uzhhorod National University was awarded the honorary title of "The leader of scientific and technical activity".
- In what way can the university encourage its researchers to publish their articles in prestigious journals?
A lot of attention is paid to publications by our scientific and educational workers in order to improve the rating of our university among higher educational institutions of Ukraine. To stimulate the scientific staff UzhNU the research and development department of the university reviewed the articles that were published in 2014. 23 heads of creative teams were awarded a bonus of 1000 UAH for every scientific article that was published in 2014 in foreign journals with high impact factor (citation index of the journal which determines its informational value). The total number of such articles is 55.
Last year the awards of 2000 UAH were given to those university staff members who published at least 4 articles in international scientific journals with high impact factor or presented at least 10 reports at international conferences abroad in 2011-2013.
At present, the research and development department of the university is collecting reports of university departments and individuals with the results of scientific work in 2015. After processing these reports we are going to reward those employees who have published articles with high impact factor in 2015. From the year 2016, scientists will be awarded immediately after the publication of the articles in journals. In addition, the management of the university is planning to re-register scientific editions of the university and publish English editions to enable UzhNU be indexed in Scopus database.
