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My Research, its Potential, and its Contribution to SCIT. Mike Thelwall. My Research: Subject. Cybermetrics (started in 1999) Part of Information Science Part of UoA 61 Library and Information Management Overlaps with UoA 25 Computer Science
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My Research, its Potential, and its Contribution to SCIT Mike Thelwall
My Research: Subject • Cybermetrics (started in 1999) • Part of Information Science • Part of UoA 61 Library and Information Management • Overlaps with UoA 25 Computer Science • Related to Science Policy, Cultural Studies, Statistics, Mathematics
My Research: Subject • Cybermetrics is the application of quantitative methods to study Internet information • Research involves using a web crawler to collect data from the web, statistics to analyse the data and the other subjects to formulate hypotheses and analyse the results
My Research: Subject • Example: most recent paper published: • “A layered approach for investigating the topological structure of communities in the Web” • Crawled the web sites of all universities in the UK, Australia and New Zealand • Devised a modification of Flake’s Community Identification Algorithm • Identified communities in the three Webs (running the algorithm in parallel on 40 computers for 2 weeks) • Showed that significant community structures are present in academic webs, if the correct parameters are used • Education and Computer Science are “topic breakers”
Achievements • Head of a highly successful research group, helping many members of staff to publish and become research active • 56 journal articles published • 98 publications in total • Three successful external funding bids • EU WISER project • Canadian SSHRC • Emerald (private publisher)
Achievements • Editorial board member for 2 journals and 1 book series • Reviewer for 9 journals • Reviewer for AHRB • External examiner for 2 Computer Science PhDs • ‘Highly Commended’ for papers published in ASLIB/Emerald publications in 2002 awarded to:Evidence for the existence of geographic trends in university web site interlinking
Achievements • Supervisor for 2 PhD students • Quoted in Nature Science Update “Search engine makes social calls” • 5 invited talks at other institutions • 20 collaborating researchers outside Wolverhampton in 4 continents over the past two years
Evidence of International Excellence • One of the most successful information science researchers in the world over the past four years? • Use the Research Assessment Exercise criteria to judge this – driven by the quality of publications
Evidence of International Excellence • What do you have to do to be classified as 5* internationally excellent in UoA 61? • Publish in the Journal of Documentation, JASIST, or Information Processing & Management (Oppenheim, 1995) • Benchmark: a total of three papers in the above three journals over a five year period
Evidence of International Excellence • My publication record… • JASIST: 7 papers in 5 years • Journal of Documentation: 7 papers in 5 years • Information Processing & Management: 3 papers in 5 years • Overall: 17 papers in 5 years in the top 3 journals • Is this the best track record (for these journals) of any academic in the World?
Evidence of International Excellence • Citation analysis –possibly used in next RAE • Duplicating the methods of Oppenheim (2000) gives 191 ISI citations to articles published in the last 4 years • Ranked 3rd out of 338 in the UK • If my 2004/5 citation rate continues the total will be close to 1,000 by 2008, one of the top in the world
Evidence of International Excellence • Lifetime achievement statistics (He & Spink, 2002) • Joint 6th highest foreign author in JASIST • Joint 2nd in the Journal of Documentation (if foreign)
Future Plans: Aims • 4-6 researchers submitted to UoA 61 for the next RAE (or equivalent) and achieving a 5* rating • 1 successful major (>£100,000 to UoW) external funding project per year • Successful management and completion of external projects • Information Science MSc options
Future Plans: Aims • Wider dissemination of general research skills within SCIT and the University • Business partnerships leading to the commercial exploitation of new research
Any Questions? A key player in a winning team