M.A. Van Hove

Department of Physics

& Institute of Computational and Theoretical Studies

HKBU

3 Oct 2016

Why publish? As a researcher, you will be evaluated by your peers, your

employer, future employers

“Publish or Perish!”

Make your work known

Validate the reliability of your work: anonymous refereeing

Archive your work

Build your CV/portfolio

Advice: try to use a unique and permanent author name

Advice: get your own ORCID (unique and personal Open Researcher and Contributor ID)

How is a researcher evaluated? Criteria (relative importance varies by discipline/country/institution):

Honors, prizes and awards (very high recognition)

Research funding received (very high recognition)

PhD/MPhil/MSc/FYP students educated (high recognition)

Publication quantity and quality (high recognition)

Presentations (high recognition for invited, plenary and keynote talks at conferences)

Membership of high-level external committees/commissions (high recognition)

Editorship of: journals (good recognition), books and proceedings (little recognition)

Refereeing (very little recognition)

Conference organization (little recognition)

Consultancy (variable recognition)

Impact on society beyond professional circle (on community, industry, health, medicine, museums, education, start-ups, media) (growing recognition)

Etc.

What forms of publication are available? Theses by PhD/MPhil/MSc/etc. students (rarely cited, as their good content is usually

published in journals) Talks/seminars/colloquia/lectures at conferences/workshops, at universities/institutes

(in order of increasing recognition): posters, contributed talks, invited talks, plenary talks, keynote talks

Proceedings of conferences/workshops (important in some disciplines, not in others) Patents (high recognition, esp. Western patents) Journals: research papers, letters (higher recognition), comments (little recognition),

reviews (higher recognition), supplementary information (no recognition), electronic open access journals (growing recognition)

Electronic preprint (e-print) archiving, e.g. arXiv in sciences (no recognition) Books (in order of increasing recognition): review articles, databases, monographs Reports of special studies, generally not widely published, e.g. for committees/projects

(recognition depends on importance of committee/project) Exhibitions, performances (recognition varies) Video presentations, movies Manuals (little to no recognition) Etc.

Evaluation metrics for journal publications There are no fair metrics, but administrators love them

Metrics are convenient but very rough (cannot be compared across disciplines or even sub-disciplines, and can be manipulated)

Impact factor of a journal: average number of citations per article Total number of your publications (ignoring quality and number of co-

authors) Total number of citations of your publications by other publications (problems: self-citations, books & review articles etc. ignored, single

highly-cited article)

More balanced metrics: i10 index = “number of papers with at least 10 citations”; simple but rarely

used h-index …

h-index h-index: “a scholar with an index of h has published

h papers each of which has been cited in other papers at least h times”;

more complex, but much used;

calculated by Web of Science/SCI or Google, etc.;

Google includes more review articles and books, increasing the h-index, e.g. by 10%.

Note: There are ways to increase your h-index, some respected, others not, e.g.:

it is accepted to collaborate with multiple co-authors (even if you contribute a smaller part to a publication, it counts as a full publication for you);

it is not respected to spread your results thinly across multiple publications;

it is unethical to be an author if you have not contributed to the publication (see also: Publications Practices).

(graph from Wikipedia)

Publish in which journals? Choose a reputable publisher (the number of publishers has exploded 50-fold

in the last 5 years: most new publishers are not reputable) Choose a high-impact journal; always consult and agree with co-authors (and

supervisors) Tailor your article to the style & readership of that journal, e.g.: high-visibility

journals often favor popular “hot” topics; others favor in-depth and detailed descriptions; some cater to narrow sets of readers; others to a wide readership

Propose or “blacklist” referees if you wish (not mandatory): but journal has no obligation to follow your wishes (this is mainly a way for journals to collect potential referee names for any publications)

Re-submission of a paper after refereeing: try to please the referees (they are volunteers!)

Advice: Consider referees’ suggestions carefully (they give useful advice from the perspective of the future reader) and revise before resubmitting a manuscript, no matter if to the same or to a different journal

Advice: If you want to publish before your competitors, consider first publishing an “e-print” in open access depositories like arXiv (not considered in citation counts, because not refereed)

How to publish? A common strategy: submit your publication to a high-level journal; if it is

rejected, submit it to a journal with similar or slightly lower impact factor, etc. With “luck” (e.g. luck with editors and with referees) you may succeed in another

journal

You may split your work into a short high-profile article (for rapid and high visibility) and a longer, more detailed article (perhaps in a journal with a different readership to broaden your target audience)

Which material/results? Manuscript body vs. supplementary information What presentation style (if not prescribed by the journal)? Ask your colleagues to inspect your manuscript before submission Note: Copyright of your research results remains with you (in US law), while

copyright of “formatting” and “presentation” is publisher’s, so you can re-publish your own results in other kinds of publications, such as review articles and books without the original publisher’s permission

Publication Practices Who should be co-author, who acknowledged?

The authorship should be limited to those who have

made a significant contribution to the concept, design,

execution or interpretation of the research study.

All those who have made significant contributions

should be offered the opportunity to be listed as authors.

Other individuals who have contributed to the study

should be acknowledged, but not identified as authors.

The sources of financial support for the project should

be disclosed.

Publication Practices What is Plagiarism, Self-Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is copying from others’ work without their authorization. Proper acknowledgement of the work of others used in a research project must be given.

Copying anonymous work without acknowledgement is also plagiarism, e.g. copying from Wikipedia.

Copying anything from the web without reference is plagiarism.

Self-plagiarism is the copying from your own work without mentioning the source (yourself). E.g.: repeat paper, repeat proposal (RGC blacklists such cases for 5 years).

Publication Practices Rights and obligations of co-authors

Every coauthor should have the opportunity to review the manuscript before its submission.

All coauthors have an obligation to provide prompt retractions or corrections of errors in published works.

Any individual unwilling or unable to accept appropriate responsibility for a paper should not be a co-author.

Authors have an obligation to include references to the precedents, sources, and context of the reported work.

Authors must survey prior work in the area and include relevant references.

Intentional omission of a pertinent author or reference is unethical and unacceptable.