The Observatory will review the conduct of "academic ranking" and expressions of "academic excellence" for the benefit of higher education, its stake-holders and the general public. This objective will be achieved by way of:
improving the standards, theory and practice in line with recommendations formulated in the Berlin Principles on Ranking of Higher Education Institutions
initiating research and training related to ranking excellence;
analyzing the impact of ranking on access, recruitment trends and practices;
analyzing the role of ranking on institutional behavior;
enhancing public awareness and understanding of academic work.
The robustness or breakdown of Lotka's law about the frequency distribution of scientific productivity depends on scientific cooperation, counting methods, interdisciplinary publishing and selection methods for sample collections. We have chosen to analyse the relationship using Mandelbrot's equivalent distribution model because this model is sensitive and uses the original data (scores). Five sets of authors and publications, the two sets used by Lotka, a set from High Energy Physics, a set from Microbiology and a set based on applicants to a research programme promoting young researchers have been used. It is shown that even for a sample of authors in High-Energy Physics with extremely strong co-authorship, Mandelbrot's distribution law is robust when complete-normalized (fractional) counting is used whereas complete counting results in a breakdown. In the field of Microbiology with much weaker cooperation, both counting methods result in a breakdown of Mandelbrot's law. Today a field like Microbiology with the corresponding set of journals, probably has a large content of interdisciplinary publishing and therefore no more fulfills the precondition of Lotka's law, that the total production of the authors (sources) is considered. For a set of applicants for the Emmy Noether Programme of the German Research Foundation. Mandelbrot's law breaks down despite the fact that all publications co-authored by the applicants are taken into account. In agreement with Bayes' theorem of conditional probabilities these results lead to the conjecture that any selection process of authors and/or publications causes a breakdown of Mandelbrot's law and, as a consequence Lotka's law.
A survey cutting across all departments found at U.S. business schools was conducted to assess the readerships of 130 journals. The survey results can help researchers both in their understanding of the composition of potential readers at given journals and in the process of selecting journals for a desirable target audience. Survey respondents also reported the degree to which articles published in various journals have stimulated their thinking and in how far publications in particular journals are believed to help in increasing the researcher’s academic reputation.
Bericht über die Einrichtung eines Forschungsinformationssystems für Medizin in Bayern und Nordrhein-Westfalen.
Die Personen sollen ihre Daten selber eingeben, aber Schnittstellen zu Medline und ISI vereinfachen die Arbeit
This toolkit, first assembled in 2009, is an effort to give a variety of people interested in understanding ways of measuring the impacts that their online scholarly resources are having.