Topic of the seminar: the results of the ranking of publication activity of University employees in 2018
- In his report, the Rector of NURE prof. Valerii Semenets noted that the activity of scientific-pedagogical and scientific workers is the main indicator of the effectiveness of scientists, an important component of the development strategy, on which the amount of funding will depend, and one of the important components in the preparation of ratings. Thus, the Shanghai ranking of universities (Academic Ranking of World Universities) takes into account the number of articles published in Nature and Science, articles from SCIE and SSCI with Web of Science. The times Higher Education World University Rankings and QS (QS World University Rankings) take into account contributions to science based on the citation rating of Scopus publications.
The rankings of U.S. News & World Report (Best Global Universities Rankings), Leiden and URAP are based solely on the evaluation of publications and research reputation of universities. The Scimago Institutions Rankings uses eleven metrics to evaluate Scopus publications.
Webometrics takes into account the number of scientific articles over 5 years that are among the 10% most cited in their field based on SCImago data and the number of links to the 100 most cited scientists according to Google Scholar citations.
The availability and quality of scientific publications are the criteria for determining the status of the national University.
According to the provisions of the Law of Ukraine “On Higher Education” (Article 29), the status of national is granted to the university in accordance with the procedure and criteria defined by the CMU (CMU Decree No. 912 of November 22, 2017 “On Approval of the Procedure and Criteria for Granting the Higher Education Institution the status of national, confirmation or denial of this status »).
The said resolution approved the criteria for confirming the status of a national higher education institution:
- the average of the indices of the Poor scientific pedagogical and scientific indexes (working in the institution of higher education at the main place of work as of December 31 of the last year of the reporting period) in the scientometric databases Scopus, Web of Science, reduced to the number of scientific and pedagogical and scientific workers of the institution;
- the number of scientific-pedagogical and scientific workers who have at least five scientific publications in periodicals, which at the time of publication was included in the Scopus or Web of Science scientometric databases, is reduced to 100 scientific-pedagogical and scientific workers working in the higher education institutions by main place of work as of December 31, the last year of the reporting period.
Publication activity is taken into account in the evaluation of ZVO in the part of scientific activity. CMU Resolution “Some Issues of State Certification of Higher Education Institutions in the Part of Carrying Out Scientific (Scientific and Technical) Activities” (August 22, 2018 No. 652) approved the Procedure of Attestation, which states that the attestation is an individual characteristic of the achievements of the institution of higher education, is calculated as the sum of values of indicators for certain components, in particular and for the following:
– the number of articles by a higher education institution by scientific direction in scientific publications indexed in Scopus and / or Web of Sciencé scientometric databases, using as an additional indicator for the scientific directions the values of the coefficients of influence of these journals.
Also, the availability and quality of scientific publications are mentioned in the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine dated December 30, 2015 No. 1187 “On Approving the Licensing Conditions for Educational Activities”; in the order of the Ministry of Education and Science of January 14, 2016 No. 13 “On approval of the Order of assignment of scientific titles to scientific and scientific-pedagogical workers”; in the order of the Ministry of Education and Science of December 12, 2015 No. 1287 “On approval of the Regulation on the Contest of projects of scientific works and scientific-technical (experimental) development …” by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine; in the order of the Ministry of Education and Science of January 15, 2018 # 32 “On Approval of the Procedure of Forming the List of Scientific Professional Editions of Ukraine”.
- The Scientific Director of the Center of information systems and technologies Prof. Valentin Filatov told about the existing means of stimulating publication activity:
– cash payments for the fact of publication of an article in indexed journals;
– cash payments for the publication of the article depending on the magnitude of the impact factor of the journal;
– cash payments for the publication of the article depending on the quartile of the journal;
– support of scientists who have no experience in preparation of articles: organization of lectures, seminars on preparation of articles;
– organized assistance in translating the texts of articles or metadata to them in professional English;
– provision of funding for participation in scientific conferences;
– provision of additional paid leave for the preparation of articles in indexed journals.
Taking into account the above, the Academic Council of the University adopted a Regulation on stimulating the publication activity of NURE employees on 28.05.2021.
The Center of information systems and technologies based on the data of the scientific library has compiled a rating of publication activity of University employees in 2018. As a result of the introduction of incentive measures in the form of cash payments for articles and monographs in publications indexed by scientometric databases Scopus and/or Web of Science, University scientists were paid bonuses totaling more than 300 thousand UAH.
If we take into account the delay in indexing of publications, we can confidently assert the appropriateness and effectiveness of the adopted Provision.
Having analyzed the publication activity after the introduction of the Regulation, it can be concluded that it is satisfactory. The total number of publications increased by 29%. But so far, the percentage of articles in the total number of publications remains at 42%. The number of articles in leap-cell editions (first-second quartile) is 11. It should be noted that despite the use of incentives, the issue of increasing the Girsh index of the University is not resolved and requires a change in approach.
However, any efforts of scientists and incentive measures will not produce the desired result until the University’s own scientific publications have joined the process of updating and entering the world information space, have implemented specific measures to increase their own “visibility” in the scientific communication system and have not been included in scientometric bases.
Thus, in the journal Radio Engineering, a part of which is translated under the terms of the contract for the journal Telecommunications and Radio Engineering by BegellHouse, indexed by Scopus, the number of publications increased by 15% – from 75 to 89 articles. Accordingly, in the journal Telecommunications and Radio Engineering the number of articles from NURE was: in 2016 – 30, in 2017 – 26, in 2018 – 48 articles.
Obviously, we need our own edition indexed by scientometric bases.
Also, if a decision is made to continue the promotion of publishing activity, I propose to take into account the experience of this year and to amend the Regulation on promotion of public activity. To calculate the impact of the publication’s impact – quartiles of the magazine.