My Research, its Potential, and its Contribution to SCIT

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

A key player in a winning team

Any Questions?