Hey,

we are adding soon our own score on the department and university pages.

Stay tuned :)

-Ijad

Impact Factors actually mean very little in any of the specialities and fields away from the giant topics such as cancer, stroke, heart disease [Sorry, I can only talk about health issues]. So as far as I am concerned using IFs is not really overly helpful, but not only that, the IFs used are not always up-to-date.

Should they re-rank? I don't think so. Frankly,within the UK [that's were I work]academic community the RG factor does not really matter. It might hint at the involvement of the person within the RG site [and that is fine], but not much more.

Prof Michael, this is true that IF means very little, but unfortunately the scientific community in developing countries has directly correlated IF with achievements of a researcher and is given heavy weight in case of award. The concept of RGS seems better as it includes all contribution and activities of scholars and researchers.

With due regards, I found a little confusion in your reply. For example you don't consider IF as a significant measure because you have stated that "So as far as I am concerned using IFs is not really overly helpful". On the other-hand you don't agree ranking on the bases of RGS. I think scoring like RGS may be helpful in overall evaluation of research performance of individuals as well as institutions and may be a solid base for ranking as compared to IF, which is basically concerned with the interest of peoples in some specific topics such as Cancer AIDS etc as you have stated in your kind response.

Despite their obvious shortcomings, IFs clearly do matter in the eyes of many institutions. I guess I have the luxury of being able to ignore them due to practicing in areas where IFs are low even in top class journals due to the small number of practitioners and therefore publications [and quotations].

My statement that I don't see a need to re-calculate the RG score is based on the fact that this score is of no significance outside the RG website, it only serves to demonstrates a person's involvement with the site. So from my point of view it would not be worth the effort. However, if RG does matter in other countries and research communities, then I would agree that it might need to be adjusted.

BTW, I am not a professor but a senior lecturer, i.e. the equivalent of an Associate Professor.

@ Dr. Michael.

My concern is also the same that IF is being given extraordinary weight by many organization "despite obvious shortcomings". This is also true that " There are certain areas where IFs are low even in top class journals due to the small number of practitioners and therefore publications [and quotations]." For example in a medical research Oncology department will always enjoy high impact factor even with small number of publications as compared to orthopaedic department with triple the number of publications than that of Oncology simply because cancer journal have high impact factor. Likewise at institutional level history, astronomy, geology departments can never compete with economics, Molecular Biology or Biochemistry departments. Such limitations necessitate an alternate system of ranking. This is true that RGS is RG site related, but if they improve the method of scoring by including other related factors or some new mechanism is introduced by any organization that measures actual performance of researchers eliminating IF type biases; then such scoring may be helpful in ranking of individuals, department and institutions. Finally thanks for your clarification that you are a Senior lecturer and not a Professor.

Hey,

we are adding soon our own score on the department and university pages.

Stay tuned :)

-Ijad

Thanks for sharing good news which indicates that IF is not an accurate measure of research performance. I wish your system bases on accounting for of hard work, performance and holistic contributions of researchers and provide equal opportunity to all to fairly compete on merits irrespective of disciplines or IF of their published work.

Dear All, I don't think it is that easy to just dismiss the IF as a tool for reference. I agree that it is not an accurate measure of research performance, especially when you compare it over different research fields, which should not be done and a wise department head, scientific leader or advisory board will not do it. The problem generally begins when during evaluation not enough effort is spend on looking and understanding the scientific contribution of the single researcher or a department but rather the (too) easy short-cut of just counting biased scientific values. This will not significantly change if in a distant future the RG score may "replace" the IF. Who will judge the scientific quality of contributions to ResearchGate. Again it will be a peer group, which in and by itself is biased due to recent trends, importance of a field, number of researchers in a field. In addition, I do not believe that many of the senior scientist with busy schedules for reports, reviews, meetings etc. will have time to get involved in discussions on RG. However, the senior scientists are after all generally evaluating. Please, don't misunderstand me. I do believe that RG can be extremely helpful for the scientific exchange of ideas, methods and findings in the future but the RG score should and will, I believe, only be an additional reference point that is mainly important for RG itself. After all, if people take time to evaluate science, the quality becomes evident beyond the IF or any other rating system. If systems are highly unfair it is either due to the lack of time or hidden agendas for non-scientific reasons. While the latter is extremely difficult to control (even with an RG score), after all we are human, we should all concentrate on spending time to understand when we are asked to evaluate the work of fellow researchers.

With all shortcomings of IF, it is much (MUCH) better indicator of scientific achievements that RG factor.

I am sorry, but the idea to use RG factor for assessment of researchers or universities is laughable. RG factor may consist only of activity on the site, not on actual research product. Student asking simple questions and participating in discussions like this one (which is not a scientific one) can rise RG factor significantly.

RG factor is important only for RG.