Let us excel in our work and let ranks take care of themselves
Friends, A few days ago Mr Raja Viswanathaan of INFLIBNET delivered the 18th Dr T B Rajashekar Memorial Lecture in which he explained how NIRF assesses an academic instituion and how librarians can help their institutions improve their ranking, esp. through improving the visibility and citability of the research papers published by the institution's faculty and students. Probably because of the limited time available for the talk, he could not tell you how such efforts to 'improve citations' often degenerate into exercises in citation gaming. Many of you might have read a recent article in Science ( AAAS) wherein a popular dental college in Southern India was accused of systematic citation gamig. Of course, someone from the college did try to deny the charge, but I thought their defence did not carry conviction. Let us remember the purpose of higher education is to teach, to learn and to do research well. Academic librarians would do well to support the faculty and students in all three activities. They could ensure that all research papers of their institutions are made OA. They could play a role in their institutions embracing open science practices. Please see: https://zenodo.org/record/8060243. Let ranks take care of themselves. Let us do what we must, viz. try hard and sincerely to excel in our work. Best wishes. Subbiah Arunachalam -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
Dear Dr. Arunachalam,
I wanted to send you a heartfelt thanks for your wise and inspiring words
about ranking vis-a-vis excellence in our work.
We need to hear more voices like yours and I, like many others, am
grateful for your active and vibrant presence in our domain.
Regards
Usha Mukunda
On Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 10:20 AM Subbiah Arunachalam
Friends,
A few days ago Mr Raja Viswanathaan of INFLIBNET delivered the 18th Dr T B Rajashekar Memorial Lecture in which he explained how NIRF assesses an academic instituion and how librarians can help their institutions improve their ranking, esp. through improving the visibility and citability of the research papers published by the institution's faculty and students. Probably because of the limited time available for the talk, he could not tell you how such efforts to 'improve citations' often degenerate into exercises in citation gaming. Many of you might have read a recent article in Science ( AAAS) wherein a popular dental college in Southern India was accused of systematic citation gamig. Of course, someone from the college did try to deny the charge, but I thought their defence did not carry conviction.
Let us remember the purpose of higher education is to teach, to learn and to do research well. Academic librarians would do well to support the faculty and students in all three activities. They could ensure that all research papers of their institutions are made OA. They could play a role in their institutions embracing open science practices. Please see: https://zenodo.org/record/8060243.
Let ranks take care of themselves. Let us do what we must, viz. try hard and sincerely to excel in our work.
Best wishes.
Subbiah Arunachalam
-- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
participants (2)
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Subbiah Arunachalam -
Usha Mukunda