What are your thoughts on scholars with RG scores < 5.00? Statistically these make up a large proportion of RG members. Are these co-opted members (members that are unaware that they're on RG) or are there other factors at work?
To Alan:
I have never used "Following", so I will reply with "I follow you".
"Interesting discussion and following" also works well.
Rather than 1000+ contacts, we should try to keep it under 20.
There are so many excellent scholars in this community with poor RG score. I feel they are not regular. Mostly scholars come to RG to get technical help, access full publications available in RG or to share their achievements. Those who are out of these requirements, they do not bother about RG score. Prof Alan F Rawle , its my opinion. May be I am wrong.
Michael John McAleer
I can remember when mine was 0....
In the words of those who have gone before me 'Interesting discussion'......
We may have someone claiming now that they remember when their RG score was negative. With the recent savage reductions in scoring, then this is always a possibility!
To Alan:
The RG score can certainly increase or decrease, but I think it has to be around a strictly positive number.
To Alan:
Unlike Q&A related to how to increase the RG score, only academics who do not care about it would be willing to discuss their low RG scores, at least from the past.
We all have to start somewhere, and subsequent moves up or down are likely to be of interest only to the individual.
To Alan:
Great minds, especially with RG scores < 5, think alike.
Oh dear,
I guess after the several 1000+ reply discussions on highest RG score, it was only a matter of time before a low RG score discussion started.
I note that RG has added a new metric of Research Interest, which seems to align better with actually research contribution without the bias of question contribution.
Dear Alexander Malm :
A related thread to your comment about Research Interest as a measure of research contribution is:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_TRI_or_the_h-index_a_better_measure_of_research_quality
To Alexander:
I guarantee there will not be 1000+ communications regarding this Question.
To state the obvious, you have already contributed two Answers.
Michael John McAleer Re your last comment: we can try. Interesting discussion & following.
Alexander Malm Oh dear, yes!
To Alan:
I have never used "Following", so I will reply with "I follow you".
"Interesting discussion and following" also works well.
Rather than 1000+ contacts, we should try to keep it under 20.
Michael John McAleer
Yes, variants on a theme always work.
I had one experience where a 'Following' had 9 recommendations and my long and informative answer (IMHO) to the poser of the question had 0 recommendations. I actually fed this back to the RG administrators. Gaming the system - that's exactly what happens. Goodhart’s Law comes to mind: ‘When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.’ In other words, when the measure being used by decision-makers to evaluate performance is the same as the target being optimized by those being measured, it is no longer a reliable measure of performance. People game the system.
The most cited example of this law in effect is the case of nail factories in the Soviet Union. The goal of central planners was to measure performance of the factories, so factory operators were given targets around the number of nails produced. To meet and exceed the targets, factory operators produced millions of tiny, useless nails. When targets were switched to the total weight of nails produced, operators instead produced several enormous, heavy and useless nails.
To Alan:
Every "nonsense" has a champion.
I have seen a one-word Answer, "Yes", recommended more than 30 times.
To Alan:
That Answer deserves one, and only one, Recommendation.
Anyone who can analyze, very quickly notices the "Follow-makers" (as well Yesists) etc., as well as extraordinary answers. I, in any case, rank the participants not by RG rating (and not even by "Total Research Interest"). I have my own grade, subjective, but more interesting... Of course, the RG rating makes sense, but it is not too much.
Vadim S. Gorshkov I always enjoy your answers and honest skepticism and cynicism. Thus I will recommend your answer.
Alan F Rawle
Thanks for the kind words, Alan. But I see myself even better. I am white and fluffy. But, "live with wolves, howl like a wolf ..." If we go back to the question, then the RG score less than 5 does not bother me. People are not born with 10 articles in "Nature".
Vadim S. Gorshkov Always good to be fluffy. I suspect that there are several orders of magnitude difference of those with RG scores < 10 in comparison to those with RG scores > 100. But it seems the focus is on the latter.
If people were born with 10 articles in Nature then this would be akin to an MCC membership where parents put their children down in order to get to wear the hallowed ('egg and bacon') tie. There are currently more than 205,000 people on the waiting list...... There is a waiting list of approximately twenty-nine years But this is cricket which no-one understands outside the old Commonwealth (and not of Massachusetts, Virginia, or Puerto Rico)
I meant a very simple thing: everyone starts sometime. It's not about "Nature", the fact is that sometimes it’s more interesting to read a young man with a RG score 5 (and who, because of his age, simply does not have a high rating yet), than a full-grown man who caught up with his score (not clear why) to 63. Although, to be honest, there is a correlation, but I would not absolutize it.
If already speak rude, then the young egghead is more interesting than the old bonehead.
Vadim S. Gorshkov I agree with you. There clearly is no link to RG score and who will go to heaven.... I like your egghead and bonehead analogy. Take another recommendation.
Naushad Khan
My point is that there will be at least 2 orders of magnitude in numbers of those members with RG score < 5.00 (or 10.00) in comparison to those with scores > 100. That's why I think we should focus on the < 5 people. At least those people can migrate (if they so wish) to > 5 relatively easily as Michael John McAleer points out above.
If the scores like RG or H-index considered as the very important manner in the scientific world then everyone runs after these scores. So, people choose to work on popular issues. It causes to slow down the number of new theories and ideas.
There are numerous researchers working in the industry who rarely publish and rarely have time for discussions. Typically they have added some old research papers they did wile in academia. RG is, however, a useful tool to connect with new topics as is often required in industry.
The informative and illuminating academic exchanges relating to this interesting Question make Q&A in RG look good.
If we consider my own organization (Malvern Panalytical) then we have an interesting set of scores - see attached. The mode is < 14 (we could select any number for my question. maybe < 5.00 was too low) - and represents 84 participants - and a fat tail extends to > 126 with a single punter fulfilling this position. Is this typical of your organization? Is the mode which is just above the lower limit (0) for the score similar to (number-based) particle counting where we have a false maximum just above the lower limit of the technique. Maybe we need a scoring similar to volume or mass based statistics. That would weight the > 126 score even higher (as it's based on the cubes of the scores). Or should it really be about quality and not quantity?
BTW, the horizontal axis on the RG scores for an institute is really weird and conflicts with the apparent histogram display of the data.
Now take another organization - Pubanchal University. The numbers of participants may be low (statistically significant?) but we have 34 participants with a < 4 score.
Alan, you shouldn't be so harsh on yourself... don't call yourself a fat tail....
Alexander Malm Perhaps fat b.... would be more applicable! You must be familiar with fat tail statistics. For example the prediction of a wave height that statistically should only occur once in 10001 years as it’s so far removed in s.d. terms from the mean. And then that wave occurs twice in 5 years.... Lots of examples here related to hurricanes and Dutch dykes....
The projects are still ongoing and the research processes are in place and we wish success in our endeavor.
Alan F Rawle I also reported to RG this strage behaviour of writing following... Admin respond to me that it doesn't go against terms and conditions of RG. I hope now when they read your question they will raise some measures.
They did already when we raised why profiles were deleted after scientists deaths.
I was going to do a webinar on Fat Tail statistics but no one could understand it, so I gave up in the same way that when I tried to form a Paranoia Society at university then someone was out to stop me...
First a Wiki link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat-tailed_distribution
Then an interesting talk on Dutch dykes:
http://seta.ceaul.fc.ul.pt/SETAtalk_09_HenkvdBrink.pdf
and some more math:
https://www.newton.ac.uk/files/seminar/20131031134014151-153844.pdf
Do not confuse Fat Tail with Fat Les:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaBdajHOsSM
Michael John McAleer Both. What made it worse was my schizophrenia so there were, in fact, twice as many starters and twice as many stoppers...
One of the best known paranoid quotes is:
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you."
Unknown
There are many excellent paranoia and paranoid quotes, with some overlap:
https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/paranoia.html
https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/paranoid.html
Chia-Lin Chang At least you can appreciate the (intended) humor. Well done! There are too many serious people around.
Dear Alan:
In my delusional and paranoid state, I thought I was being serious.
In 2 days, this excellent and numerically-challenged Question has received 55 Answers/Replies (what is the difference?), 6 Recommendations, and 179 Reads.
Quality speaks for itself.
Chia-Lin Chang But still won't match the competing 'Scholars with RG scores > 100'. 'Following' this 'good discussion'....
Both questions are rather pointless exercises but some will I think believe my question was genuine and not tongue-in-cheek....
What are your thoughts on scholars with RG scores greater than 137.589999…?
Thank you in advance,
Prof Dr. Romeo Meštrović
Dear Alan:
If any academic took a Question like this seriously (I mean no disrespect), as distinct from the undoubted quality of the Answers, it would reflect on them.
To Romeo:
According to my list of academics with RG scores > 50, which does not purport to be comprehensive, there are 71 academics with RG scores > 137.59.
My thoughts?
The threshold is high, and there are at east 71 academics who meet it.
Romeo Meštrović Thank you for your useful question. And I know precisely why you've selected 137.59.... But I'm no scholar...
You remind me that last night our local farmer asked me to help him round up his 38 sheep. I replied 40...
Dear Michael John,
Does your list (of such 71 academics) contain RG member(s) with RG score exactly equal to 137.59?
Romeo Meštrović I suspect that the list may not be up to date and thus there would be no-one at this exact score. However, if the list is up to date today, then I can think of one person only with this exact score.
To Romeo:
"RG scores > 137.59" gives 71 academics.
"RG scores > 137.589999" would make it 72 academics.
Being in the top 72, at least on my list, from 15 million members in RG is quite impressive, regardless of whether one cares about the numerical value of the RG score.
Para mi, minulle, IMHO, I need a definition of 'academic' 'cus I ain't one that's for sure. I can't even spell injuneer and now I is one...
Chia-Lin Chang At least you can spell engineer but I take no offense (as we spell it this side of the pond....)
Dear Alan:
Both spellings of the word have the same definition and meaning, but "s" is used in American English, and "c" seems to be standard almost everywhere else, including the UK, India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
I might just be able to spell engineer, but while I was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Systems Engineering at the University of Tokyo, I did not ever understand what a systems engineer is or does.
As Pål Baggethun said, there are many researchers working currently in the industry, and won't contribute as often with papers and other academic studies. My self included.
I really want to write about every knew application and material I do research about, but secrecy is key in the industry business.
Chia-Lin Chang Yes, I understand the difference. I started life as English (even though my schooling was in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Germany) and later emigrated to the US so I'm one of the few people in our organization (organisation) that can translate between American and English and vice versa...
Important because ISO uses English-English and ASTM uses American-English.
One example that occurred just an hour ago. We were viewing a presentation put together by our UK team and it discussed car hire. In the US this is referred to as car rental and car hire would involve a chauffeur or a taxi driver for the day - comes with a driver.
One big difference is the understanding of 'pavement' in English and American. American would consider it the norm to be driving on the pavement....
To Alan:
Driving on the pavement would be illegal in many countries as it would endanger pedestrians.
Michael John McAleer That's because driving on the pavement means driving on the road/asphalt in American. To Americans the pavement (in English-English) is the sidewalk... So only driving on the sidewalk would be a problem here....
Every researcher sooner or later will start to interest on Researchgate.
regards,
G
To Alan:
Excepting the USA and possibly a few other countries, driving a motor vehicle on the pavement would be illegal as it would endanger pedestrians.
Hi Michael John McAleer
Seems there's been some strange re-arrangement of posts here. The word 'pavement' means different things in American-English speaking countries to those in English-English countries and I thought I'd addressed this above. Ah well, just have to follow and recommend your post. However, in some countries of the world driving on the (English-English) pavement appears to be the norm - certainly for parking.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIJrYSoYEoQ
and this contra perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg2Ejs6S7NM
To Alan:
I was Answering your perfectly clear, helpful and informative explanation with a dry response.
Michael John McAleer Thank you for your dry response which gets a recommendation.
To Alan:
Thank you, but we have to stop meeting like this.
Your interesting Question has, probably unintentionally, hit 80 Answers (strike that, 81 including this one), 230 Reads, and 7 Recommendations.
Imagine what might have happened if you were really trying.
Dear Alan:
Thank you for the very interesting and instructive explanations.
I do not know if you had noticed, but there are now 83 Answers, 238 Reads, and 8 Recommendations to the interesting and still numerically-challenged Question.
Who would have thought?
Chia-Lin Chang I wouldn't have thought...but then 'I do not think therefore I'm not' as I think a famous philosopher once said.. Or was it 'I think, therefore I am'?
In every particular subfield of science, “the academic world“ is very small.
Is 100 answers our first (collective) objective?
I refer to Goodhart’s Law again....
Dear Romeo:
The academic world is indeed very small.
However, the number of Answers to this interesting Question is not.
Latin is a language as dead as dead can be
First it killed the Romans and now it's killing me
Dear Prof. Dr Chia Lin Chang,
Certainly, the reason (that "the number of Answers to this interesting Question is not small") is that not only academics from one specific scientific area are involved in this discussion.
I count 92 (no, 93) answers/replies now.
100 replies before morning? East Coast Time, of course....
Depending on which translator is used:
Necavit Latinitas Romam Romanosque; ista lingua mortua me necabit quoque!
or
Latina Lingua est sicut quod mortui mortuum esse
Primum autem quod occidi et Romanorum suus 'Num occidere me
Going back and forth with Google Translate plays havoc like the "telephone" game.
I wonder if a reply limit should be imposed on RG?
I notice that the "similar" questions to this topic boast over 1000 replies, and I would like to expect that the 'scholars' still replying haven't read all the responses before them.
I wonder what the maximum number of replies is before we can be confident that anything additional is either going to be repetition or tangential? - this conversation being a clear example of the latter.
You're absolutely correct, Alex, and the main reason for formulating this question.
I trust you are 'Following' this 'Interesting Discussion'....
98....
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