How to measure research impact: YouTube series

Collates twelve mini-videos on measuring research impact based on an interview with Vas Taras

Anne-Wil Harzing - Fri 9 Oct 2020 17:13 (updated Tue 27 Aug 2024 08:11)

In July 2020 Vas Taras - Associate Professor at UNCG and Founder and Coordinator of X-Culture - invited me to one of his PhD classes to talk about measuring research impact and my free academic resources: the Publish or Perish software and the Journal Quality List. He had also distributed the invite to a few mailing lists, so we ended up with an audience of nearly 100 attendees from more than 25 countries, including not just Western countries such as the USA, UK, Canada and various European countries, but also Colombia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Lithuania, Macau, Malaysia, Oman, South Africa and Turkey.

Vas turned out to be an excellent interviewer, making it quite easy to cut up the recording into bite-size videos. So in the four sections below you'll find twelve 2-5 minute videos, as well as three 10-15 minute playlists with four videos each. The interview covered topics as diverse as what motivates me to continue with the PoP software, my concerns about the Journal Impact Factor, the importance of academic volunteering, and how a new type of h-index allows cross-disciplinary comparisons. If you prefer to watch the entire interview as one long video, you can also simply click on the video above.

All about Publish or Perish & the Journal Quality List

In the first two videos I explain why we created the Publish or Perish software back in 2006, how much time it takes to develop and support it, and what motivates me to continue to offer it. In the third video I outline which data sources you can search in through Publish or Perish (Google Scholar, Google Scholar Profiles, Microsoft Academic, Web of Science and Scopus). In August 2020 we also added PubMed to faciliate medical research and research on COVID-19 in particular. The final video outlines the history of the Journal Quality List.

All about metrics: metrics vs. peer review, non-academic impact, JIF, and a disciplinary neutral h-index

The second set of videos is all about metrics. First we discuss why we need both peer review and metrics. Second, as both Vas and myself are heavily involved in social media, we talk about whether non-academic impact should "count" and how can it be measured. In the third video I explain how a new annualised individual h-index that we introduced in PoP can "equalise" performance comparisons across disciplines. Finally, in the last short video I share my view on the journal impact factor.

Q&A: Quality or quantity, academic volunteering, making your case, and doing impactful research

This final set of videos is part of the Q&A of the interview session. I discuss the best publication strategy, i.e. whether to focus on quality or quantity, how to make your case for resarch impact, why you should get involved in academic volunteering, and why it is so important to do research with societal impact.

Three playlists: watch them all!

All of the above twelve videos are included in the three playlists below, so you can watch them in three easy chunks of 10-15 minutes. Hope you enjoy them. If you do, please subscribe to my YouTube channel and/or drop me a line to let me know.

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Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.

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