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Great increase in
Dramatic increase in international articles
The number of published articles have increased dramatically at all of the University of Gothenburg’s faculties, statistics from the University Library’s digital services show.
The greatest increase is in the humanities and social sciences, particularly at the Faculty of Education.
LARS KULLMAN,
bibliometrician at the University Library has produced the statistics, which are based on Web of Science. He points out that Sahlgrenska Academy accounts for as much as 58 percent of all published articles at the University of Gothenburg, and the Faculty of Science accounts for 19 percent. – Of course, it is more difficult for faculties that already publish extensively, and which are well covered in Web of Science, to increase publications further compared to those faculties that publish less, and are going from low levels of coverage. Web of Science, which mainly shows articles from international, peer-reviewed journals, has relatively low coverage of the humanities and social sciences, and even though the coverage has improved over the past few years, this means that comparisons over time are somewhat less certain for these subjects. But the trend, that researchers within the humanities and social sciences publish an increasing number of articles, and in English, is still clear and also corresponds with what we can see in the GUP.
According to the GUP, which is better suited to comparisons within education sciences, the Faculty of Education has increased the number of articles it has published by almost 50 percent in five years, says Dean Åke
Ingerman.
– The increase in the number of published articles began at the beginning of the 2000s, and the number of portfolio theses in particular have grown considerably over the past few years. Furthermore, from 2020, education sciences will receive an extra 27.7 million krona, which is a way of evening out historical discrepancies between the faculties. This will certainly increase the rate of publication even more.
The Department of Food and Nutrition and Sport Science is one of the faculty’s departments that publishes the greatest number of articles.
– This may be because both food and nutrition and sport science are cross-disciplinary subjects, drawing from the humanities, social sciences and science, says Head of Department Frode Slinde. The subjects are also international in nature, so it is only natural to present research findings in English in international journals.
A researcher’s scientific publications are crucial for receiving external research grants, but they are also one of the factors in the faculty’s internal allocation model for research funding, he points out. – Of course, publications are also an important part of a researcher’s qualifications, as well as one of the factors considered in recruitments and promotions.
Naturally, having more of the faculty’s research findings published in various journals is a positive thing. But it is also important to have constant discussions about what it means to publish, Åke Ingerman points out. – For example, we need to warn researchers about predatory journals, which charge a fee for publishing and are of sub-par quality. It would also be unfortunate if the many publications in English were to lead to an impoverishment of the Swedish language. Furthermore, within education sciences there is a wealth of journals that can be very broad in scope and that lack a clear hierarchy. In addition, there is a risk of fragmentation, i.e. that researchers write articles about the smallest breakdown of results. This may make the field difficult to review.
One department that has maintained a high level of publication over a long period of time, but still managed to improve their numbers further, is the Department of Psychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences. In 2014, there were 84 published articles in Web of Science, five years later the figure was 107.
– Part of the explanation may be that the subject of psychology has a long tradition of publishing in reputable journals, Prefect Kerstin Falkman explains. More or less all of our doctoral students write portfolio theses. Our subject is also close to medicine, in both content and tradition, in terms of things such as co-authors, dividing studies into different articles, etc. And for some years now, the department has also instituted a publishing policy, where the quality of the journal is emphasised, which should lead to many
ÅKE INGERMAN
KERSTIN FALKMAN
articles being indexed in Web of Science, even if our policy is based on the Norwegian Register.
Kerstin Falkman identifies two problems with focusing on the number of published articles. – As being published in scientific journals is the true hard currency for the individual researcher and for the department, the focus on publishing may result in less room for collaboration, communication and application of research in society. However, I do not consider this to be a problem at our department; our researchers are very actively engaged with society. – The second problem is that a high rate of publishing risks contributing to excessive workloads for the individual researcher. This is something I believe may have serious consequences.
Eva Lundgren & Allan Eriksson
FACTS
Cross-disciplinary citation database that indexes the content of more than 21,000 peer-reviewed, scientific journals, but also an increasing number of books and conferences. The database provides good coverage of medicine and science, but less of the humanities and social sciences, even if more subjects within these fields have been indexed over the past few years. The limited coverage makes the database less suited to citation analyses of the humanities and social sciences. Furthermore, the database’s focus on English-language publications means that Swedish-language publications, for example, have limited coverage.
Source: Lars Kullman, Digital Media, University Library.
Publications indexed by Web of Science
Top Departments
Institute of Medicine 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Total
577 607 661 628 686 764 3923
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology 452 479 523 604 618 726 3402 Institute of Clinical Sciences 429 493 538 570 621 665 3316
Institute of Biomedicine 294 295 329 312 298 337 1865
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences 186 233 191 196 206 205 1217
Department of Chemistry and Molecular Biology 189 171 170 167 152 137 986
Institute of Health and Care Sciences 82 113 143 131 156 155 780
Department of Mathematical Sciences 108 121 139 121 129 129 747 The Department of Psychology 84 105 109 112 93 107 610 Department of Earth Sciences 84 98 85 90 102 131 590 Institute of Odontology 77 114 81 103 115 94 584 Department of Physics (GU) 9 88 90 102 94 88 551
Community medicine and public health (Inst. of Medicine) 48 63 94 103 114 116 538
Department of marine sciences (started at 2015) X 27 86 113 106 118 450
The Department of Political Science Department of Economics 47 54 63 81 72 92 409
62 68 50 71 78 75 404
Department of Business Administration 37 60 48 73 64 73 355 Institutionen för kost- och idrottsvetenskap 48 66 56 49 60 74 353 Centre for Person-centred Care - GPCC 36 52 69 55 59 57 328
Psychiatry and Neurochemistry (Inst. of Neuroscience) 42 41 40 50 55 56 284
Fakulties 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Sum
Sahlgrenska Academy 1721 1888 2042 2127 2290 2441 12509
Faculty of Science 642 733 744 772 785 800 4476
Faculty of Social Science 208 282 287 317 325 342 1761
School of Business, Economics and Law 141 166 164 203 225 219 1118
Faculty of Education 85 154 154 140 149 200 882
Faculty of Humanities 59 102 91 109 112 110 583 IT Faculty 7 35 26 37 31 43 179 Other GU sections 4 21 32 19 24 29 139
Faculty of Fine Applied and Performing Arts 1 5 3 5 9 11 34
