How to highlight your relevant publications in your Curriculum Vitae

January 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Having research published in journals is not easy, especially if they are indexed in relevant data bases or with impact factor; so if we have a few, we’d better highlight them in the Curriculum Vitae.

How to highlight your relevant publications in your Curriculum VitaeI’ve often found that the ones who review our Curriculums at universities have a limited knowledge about citations, indexed journals or impact factor, but instead our published articles are usually an important part to be considered when applying to an academic job vacancy. So you have to make your relevant publications easy to read for them.

To do it you just need to add to the publications the most relevant indexes or databases in their field of specialty, or best known, where the journals are listed: the two or three of each publication, not to overwhelm with information. Often the education ministry itself gives the criterion of the most important journal indexes for each field of specialty, among which usually always is mentioned ‘Journal Citation Reports’ (Thomson Reuters).

If you also worked hard and published in a high impact factor journal, you should also indicate it. As well as if their impact factor is in quartile 1 and 2, indicating both quartile and its position in the ranking of their field of knowledge.

For example, I’d introduce my last publication in the Curriculum Vitae as follows:

  • Hernandez Barros, R. and López Domínguez, I. (2013): “Integration Strategies for the Success of Mergers and Acquisitions in Financial Services Companies”, Journal of Business Economics and Management, Vol. 14 (5,), pp. 979-992. Journal indexed in ‘Journal Citation Reports’ (Thomson Reuters), Impact Factor (2012): 1,881 (Position 55/333 in ‘Economics’, Q1).

But for other indexed publications without impact factor, it would be something like:

  • Martínez Torre-Enciso, M.I. and Hernandez Barros, R. (2013). Operational risk management for insurers. International Business Research, Vol. 6 (1), 1-11. Journal indexed in: EconLit (EBSCO), DOAJ.

Moreover, different article categories can be used when listing our publications; for example, as is usually listed in many websites departments and universities:

  1. Articles in indexed journals
  2. Articles in other journals (refereed)
  3. Other articles, working papers, chapters, technical notes, …

Obviously there are more ways to do it, but this works, though it cost me some time to have it clear, so I share it with you.

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The lost war on journal’s papers and open access

January 19, 2014 2 Comments

the lost war on journal's papers and open accessElsevier, the publishing house, is requesting scientific social-networking sites, and directly to authors, to remove the papers posted online without their permission (The Economist, 2014).

  • When an article is published, some in principle logical copyright is transferred to the academic journals, as they have some editorial costs, and also often provide a powerful and quality platform (the electronic journal webpage), well positioned for SEO in search engines like Google. In other words, they usually provide an interesting service for the international scientific community, but of course at a cost.

The need for access to scientific literature or knowledge in an open and easy way is behind this problem, of course, as the good feeling to challenge the growing power of the powerful publishing corporations; but I feel that the unstoppable force that moves desperately researchers and authors to disclose their papers is the growing obsession with citations and the metrics associated:

  1. On the one hand, universities and accrediting agencies require professors to publish in journals indexed in specific databases, as ISI Web of Knowledge / Web of Science (Thomson Reuters), Scopus (Elsevier) or EBSCO.
  2. But there is an increasing pressure on citations from our articles as a measuring metric of the impact and quality of our research. This leads us to disclose our papers to be found in the Internet, either through working papers in repositories, or hanging the articles or abstracts directly in social and academic networks.

However, this ‘lost’ war (for publishing houses) on journal’s papers and open access shows a certain lack of knowledge by scientists of how SEO and search engines work, since a paper or article is much more easily found for example in Google if it is published in a platform / journal of these corporations than if it’s posted in a repository or in the social networks.

Then, of course, there are other related or derived connotations, such as academic networking: if a researcher or peer asks us a copy of our last article, do we refuse it when is probably a potential and valuable citation?

Finally, the solution to publish an earlier version of the article in open access, not the article itself, sounds a little sloppy. Anyway, I can’t think of disclosing an article that has been published and has publisher’s copyright, because I value my relationship with the editors of journals, it would be like betraying them, don’t you think?

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Research papers, English language and fair play

January 12, 2014 2 Comments

Research papers, English language and fair playA few days ago I was criticized ironically on the social networks (by a non-academic consultant) by the grammar of one of my blog posts, although I take much care of the English writing, of course, and I usually dedicate to it around 25% of the time. It made me feel pretty bad, but it helped me to reflect on the theme of research papers, English language and fair play.

Something similar can happen to non-native English speakers with our academic articles, with which I’ve never had trouble publishing in premier journals in English, the last one in a fist quartile Journal Citation Reports (ISI Web of Knowledge / Web of Science) indexed journal. It’s true that there was a peer-reviewer (I don’t know whether He/She was native or non-native English speaker) in one of them who told me something about the writing, but as I explained that I had sent it to edit the English (I had the bill), they didn’t say anything back again.

Papers should be written in English for two main reasons:

Those of us who are non-native English have a handicap here, but it need not be a barrier to disseminate knowledge. The world would lost much of the innovation and development if journals were not open to international scientists, and journals understand it this way, there could be no complains about it. Another thing is that the English required for the manuscripts is of first class, which is fair and reasonable but slows and lengthens the process of publishing in journals for non-native speakers.

In case you find it helpful, the process I use to write an article in English is as follows, because I understand that not writing well could in itself spoil the work and effort invested in a research:

  1. Once I have a revised and contrasted research draft in Spanglish (parts in English and parts in Spanish), I translate it fully into English, paragraph by paragraph, carefully reviewing the meaning of each sentence and making sure it is understood.
  2. Then I send it to edit the writing to a specialized academic editor on my field of knowledge.
  3. And, finally, with the reviewer’s comments, I correct and improve it.

Thereby I expect that my articles, and blog posts, are understood, are well written and transmit my research and ideas, not that they win a prize for literature or are compared with the works of Hemingway! On the other hand, I think that non-native English academics should also be given a fair chance in this publishing world, providing we observe the writing rules and don’t hide behind our limitations.

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Academic Conferences: Updating, Networking and Rock n’ Roll

January 6, 2014 Leave a comment

The poll results changed my schemes (or rather, my expectations) a little bit; but I don’t know why it surprises me, because academics always answer our polls in a fair and sensible way, as you can see below. The question was What kind of conferences are you attending?

One of the comments was very graphic and explanatory: A professor assists to academic conferences to learn about the latest research in the field (updating), to test his research with his peers and meet scientists for future collaboration (networking), all in a high level university environment in another country that allowed him to get away from the pressure of everyday life (Rock n’ Roll), and even do some tourism in the free time.

Academic Conferences: Updating, Networking and Rock n' Roll

My appreciation was that the current web 2.0 approach towards scientific conferences were also changing, particularly the issue of networking (with social communities), and because of traveling (it seems to me a bit cumbersome and costly, not always funding is provided). But of course, if you take it as a milestone once or every two years, as described before, things change significantly, and I’ll have to restate my relationship with conferences again.

Regarding the poll itself, my general conclusions and ideas are the following ones:

  1. Quality of the conference (52%) is important for respondents, which has much sense to meet peers for future collaborations and for testing our research.
  2. Around 15% of respondents believe that any kind of conference their field of knowledge is acceptable, I guess to meet the expectations of improvement and maintaining of curriculum, which is very legitimate.
  3. Have the paper published in the proceeding or journal is not the main objective when going to a conference (22%). This is the most interesting finding: for me assisting to conferences is a necessary part of the process of disseminating research, but is considered as two different things; I’ll have to investigate further about it.
  4. In order to reduce costs, I suggested assisting to conferences organized around the home city and even virtual ones (11%), but they obtained poor results, perhaps because funds are usually provided by universities.

So, have you chosen the conferences where you’re planning to attend in 2014? At Gaudeamus you can find a few from different organizers, fields of knowledge and countries, if you need some Rock n’ Roll, of course.

What kind of conferences are you attending? Poll results

  • Only to international conferences, 18.72%
  • Depending on the scientists / professors attending (for networking), 17.45%
  • Only those organized by universities or institutions that I trust, 15.74%
  • Any kind of conference my field of knowledge is acceptable, 14.89%
  • Only if the paper presented is published in the proceedings, 12.34%
  • Only if the paper presented is eligible to be published in indexed journals, 9.79%
  • Those organize in my city / my country, funding is not always available, 5.96%
  • I attend (or planning to attend) virtually, if possible, it’s a new interesting trend, 5.11%

* The poll was posted in November 2013 in many academic discussion groups. Around 950 answers were collected.

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