Citation analysis is a common tool used to trace scholarly research, measure impact (trying to quantify the quality!), and justify academic tenures, promotions, and funding decisions (especially subjective decisions). As on date, several citation indices are available, like the Science Citation Index (SCI) from Thomson Reuters. Hence a natural question arises- of all citation indices, which one should be used to measure the quality of a journal?

In fact Thomson Reuters itself offers several citation indices; the SCI covering 3,769 journals, a larger version Science Citation Index Expanded covering 6,650 scientific and technical journals across 150 disciplines., Social Sciences Citation Index covering 2,474 social sciences journals across 50 disciplines, Arts & Humanities Citation Index covering 1,395 arts and humanities journals, and so on [1].

Even though SCI is widely used, it does not necessarily include several journals of repute, even in the fields of science and engineering itself. Since a university produces research papers in all fields, the basis for using SCI alone to judge the quality of research (for the entire university) is questionable.

Further, several studies have indicated the shortcomings of SCI, while trying to quantify the quality. One such study concludes that "contrary to the implications of a low impact factor, an analysis of journal citations in Advanced Cardiac Life Support publications over two decades suggests that emergency medicine has made significant contributions to a broad and important area of scientific inquiry" [2].

An insight into the relevant happenings in China is unavoidable here:

Rao Yi, a renowned neurobiologist and the Dean of Peking University's College of Life Sciences opines that [3] the "reliance on SCI paper numbers and the status of a journal in which a paper is published has negatively impacted the quality of work produced by China's scientists. Most of China's 5000 science and technology journals are not included in SCI".

The zealous pursuit of SCI papers has led Suning, editor-in-chief of China Medical Association journals, to suggest the acronym SCI is short for 'Stupid Chinese Index'. Yigong, Deputy Dean of the School of Medicine of Tsinghua University says that "the rampancy of SCI in China is just a result of the dominance of administrative officials in the evaluation of academic research. The officials do not have enough professional knowledge so they have to rely on SCI". Hongfei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Chemistry suggests that "the wide use of objective evaluation methods such as SCI in China is mainly because the evaluators want to find a pretext to justify their decisions" [4].

The criticism of the SCI in China first appeared in early 2000s. In May 2003, several government organizations, including the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, the National Natural Science Foundation, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, issued a joint circular to oppose the sole use of SCI papers to evaluate scientists [4].

Alternative citation indices:

Scopus: a citation database of research literature and quality web sources covering nearly 18,000 titles from more than 5,000 publishers (of which 16,500 are peer-reviewed journals, including over 1,200 Open Access journals).

Google Scholar: a scholarly literature database that includes peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports available from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as those available across the web. Search results are displayed according to relevance.

Other Services currently offering cited reference searching [5]: Chemical Abstracts / SciFinder / SciFinder Scholar, NASA Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service, Scitation / Spin Web, PROLA (Physical Review Online Archive), Optics InfoBase, CiteSeer, Science Direct (for Elsevier publications), PsycINFO, IEEE Xplore, Spires HEP, IOP (Institute of Physics), CrossRef.

Comparisons and Conclusions:

A few studies have been made to find the alternatives to SCI. In view of lower number of Indian journals listed on SCI compared to Scopus, Jain [6] concludes that "Scopus has wider scope than SCI for Indian scenario. The coverage of Indian journals is the highest ever in Scopus compared to any international indexing service".

Bauer and Bakkalabasi [7] have conducted a case study of comparing the citation counts provided by SCI, Scopus, and Google Scholar for articles from the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) published in 1985 and in 2000. SCI provided the largest citation counts for the 1985 articles, although this could not be tested statistically. For JASIST articles published in 2000, Google Scholar provided statistically significant higher citation counts than either SCI or Scopus, while there was no significant difference between SCI and Scopus. They recommended that the researchers should consult Google Scholar in addition to SCI or Scopus, especially for a relatively recent article, author or subject area. Consulting Google Scholar may prove most useful for disciplines such as physics, where nontraditional forms of publishing are widely accepted.

The changes in scholarly communication, including preprint / postprint servers, technical reports available on the internet, and open access e-journals are developing rapidly, and traditional citation tracking using SCI may miss much of this new activity. Given the changes in scholarly communication induced by technology and the corresponding proliferation of resources that offer citation tracking, it is imperative that a rigorous study be undertaken to determine which sources perform best for particular subjects or time periods, instead of using SCI alone [7].

References:

1. http://thomsonreuters.com

2. Barnaby D.P. and Gallagher E.J., "Alternative to the Science Citation Index impact factor as an assessment of emergency medicine's scientific contributions", Annals of emergency medicine, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 78-82, 1998.

3. "Young scientist: Beware when SCI can harm you", http://www.sciencenet.cn.

4. Hepeng Jia, and Tao Sun, "Science Index a target for criticism in China", Chemistry World, Issue August 2009, http://www.rsc.org.

5. Roth D.L., "The emergence of competitors to the Science Citation Index and the Web of Science", Current Science, Vol. 89, No. 9, pp. 1531-1536, 2005.

6. Jain N.C., "Scopus has wider scope than Science Citation Index", Current Science, Vol. 88, No. 3, pp. 331, 2005.

7. Bauer K, and Bakkalbasai N., "An Examination of Citation Counts in a New Scholarly Communication Environment", D-Lib Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 9, 2005.

At the outset, let me address the utterances of Prof. M. Thenmozhi:

A report in Business Standard attributes two statements to Prof. Thenmozhi:

1. She says "IIT professors manage a lot of administrative work, for no extra money, a task UGC professors are not required to do."

I am not aware of work load of IIT Professors as the guidelines are not available in public domain. Perhaps they teach for 4-12 hours per week, in addition to the administrative work and research. I have even seen a professor at IITM who does not teach even one course during even semester. However, for a UGC Professor, the workload should not be less than 40 hours a week for 30 working weeks (180 teaching days) in an academic year.  It should be necessary for the teacher to be available for at least 5 hours daily in the University / College. The 40 hours work load per week involves (only) 14 hours of direct teaching [1]. What does a UGC Professor do for 40-14=26 hours per week? Just hanging around?

2. She also says "Under the flexible cadre system, which we have been following so long, we could appoint and promote faculty depending on their performance, irrespective of their age and experience per se. For instance, many brilliant lecturers and PhDs could become professors by their early thirties"

Can she substantiate this by providing data on the age of youngest-full-professor in IIT system? What is the number of faculty-members-in-early-thirties, who have been promoted as full professors till date? I never heard of a full-professor in his / her early thirties in India, that too in IITs! If we consider 12 years of schooling, 4 years of Bachelor's degree (in engineering), 2 years of master's degree, 3 years of Ph.D, 1 year post doc, and 4 years each at the level of assistant professor and associate professor, one will be 36 by the time he / she becomes a full professor! 

It appears IIT faculty have also picked holes in Sibal's ideas! Unfortunately there are several holes in the original holes picked by AIIITFF! The deepest hole has been picked up, again, by Prof. Thenmozhi! In response to the remarks by Mr. Sibal on salary being only ‘icing on the cake’ for IIT faculty because of their large consultancy earnings, Prof. Thenmozhi said "Any consultancy earnings that accrue to a few of them are fair compensation for their additional work for specific clients. In any case, a large proportion of the total consultancy earnings of these few faculty actually goes back to the Institute and to the government as income tax."

Then why ask for a salary hike at all? In any case, a large proportion of the hiked salary actually goes back to the Institute and to the government as income tax! 

Prof. Thenmozhi as well as the AIIITFF have pointed out that "there were anomalies in the MHRD’s statement on promotions during a professor’s academic career. A person with a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent in engineering or a post-graduate degree or equivalent in arts, commerce, humanities, sciences or social sciences is eligible to join any university as a regular assistant professor and is eligible for ‘promotion’ to the post of associate professor in a minimum period of 12 years through his ‘career progression’ after obtaining the required additional educational qualifications while in service. Many such faculty obtain their PhDs in the IITs under the quality improvement programme while in service. To compare such a faculty with an IIT faculty who is directly recruited at any level, is a pointer to glaring anomalies”.

The AIIITFF has got a misconception here. A Bachelor's degree in engineering is not enough to join any university as a regular assistant professor. Before drafting the questionnaire to MHRD, the AIIITFF should have checked the eligibility criteria in the UGC Regulations (please see Ref. 1).

What is wrong if a faculty from any university obtain his/her Ph.D. from IITs under quality improvement programme (QIP)? The eligibility criteria for the selection and the rules and regulations for QIP scholars are no different from those of a regular Ph.D. scholar! You can check the ordinances of IITM here (pdf). Just because a UGC faculty joins the Ph.D. programme at IITs under the QIP category, can you condemn him/her? What if he/she were to resign and join IITs for Ph.D.?

What if a UGC faculty chooses to take a study leave of 3 years, joins IITs for Ph.D. (albeit under regular category), go back to his/her university after completion of Ph.D. serve the bond period or pay the money and get rid of the bond-executed, and finally join IITs as a faculty? Would the AIIITFF hail such faculty members? I know quite a few faculty members of this category in IITs. Is Ph.D. from some other university, say University of Madras, better than IIT Ph.D. (under QIP scheme)?

If AIIITFF admits that the quality of their own Ph.D. programme (be it QIP or whatever) is poor, what is the basis for asking a salary hike? Shouldn't they improve the quality of Ph.D. programme before seeking a salary hike?

[1] Item No. 21 on page 60 in this UGC Regulations (pdf).

Despite the advice from quite a few 'notable' persons, I am scared of Swine Flu. Who is not?

Let us consider a typical advice from the Vice Chancellor of Bangalore University: "Ridiculing the declaration of holidays by schools in the city following the outbreak of H1N1 influenza, he said that the issue was being blown out of proportion. More people die of cancer or dengue, than swine flu. I am not asking people to ignore the outbreak. But give it the importance that is needed, and not more said the Vice-chancellor, who is also a noted cardiologist."

Unfortunately, the 'noted cardiologist' has forgotten (or he is not aware) that cancer is not infectious or contagious. However, the swine flu is contagious, and is a pandemic.

"When it comes to the swine flu, and all the other flus that will probably hit us in the coming seasons, I would say- you gotta live a little", says Suhasini Haider. I thought of deriving some courage from her and living a little, until I read the statement "We have vaccines for absolutely everything from small pox to the common cold". Where on earth do we have a vaccine for common cold?

After all my scare is not without basis. Many people feel that the Government is not doing enough to contain the pandemic. To boot, I do have many students in my classes, who travel to Bangalore, Chennai, and Coimbatore on weekends, the places affected by swine flu! To the best of my knowledge, the Government is not tracking them. Nor did I receive any guidelines from the Government asking me to send home the students with symptoms of swine flu. If so, why shouldn't I send the coughing-students home, by marking them present in the attendance register (unofficially)? If a student has the symptoms of flu and yet attend my classes, can I file a case of culpable homicide against him/her?

All of a sudden I started noticing if the persons with whom I interact have running nose or cough and so on. Prof. Lakshmanan, with whom I go for coffee twice daily, has cough and fever since a couple of days. But I couldn't say no to him when he called me for a cup of coffee, even when I knew that he had been to Coimbatore two weeks ago! I also noticed that the young lady at Nescafe coughed exactly when serving the coffee to me. Last week, I happened to meet a person who came from UAE, and he has a travel history of visiting places affected by swine flu.

And then this happened.....

Yesterday, I picked up sore throat, but I had no fever. And I know that swine flu symptoms need not include fever. Could this be swine flu? The mortality rate of swine flue is (only!) 1%. But WHO says the pandemic may affect 1 billion people in next two years, and 1% of 1 billion is sizable! What if I belong to that rare group (!), as I did have bronchitis once?

According to the advice from Health Minister, if I have the symptoms of swine flu I should stay home. Hey, wait. Shouldn't I care for my family members? If I stay home, wouldn't I infect my near and dear ones? Isn't it a better option so flee the home if I have symptoms of swine flu lest my family members are infected? Perhaps it is time to keep all my life insurance policies at a file, easily accessible by my wife, and decide at what point of time (symptoms) I should flee (if I decide so).

It appears, this blog has a long life. This post (which I started to type on 13th and finished on 14th night) is not destined to be the last post on this blog! I am alright today and my sore throat did not become a full-blown throat infection! Or I might have contracted the swine flu without any disease, as it can be cured without any medication (it is possible).

This nature of swine flu (that it can be cured without any medication) gives tremendous scope to some pseudo scientists who claim that they (or their method) can cure the swine flu (claim 1, claim 2). With respect to the second link, it appears that the claimant has a history of false claims! Perhaps he should cure himself of blepharospasm (watch the video carefully), before claiming the cure for any other disease!

Here is the list of Nalgal Mantapam concerts:

All programmes start at 8.00 P.M IST.

21/7/2009
U. Srinivas and U. Rajesh - Mandolin
Thanjavur R. Govindharajan - Tavil
Thanjavur K. Murugubhoopati - Mridangam
S.V. Ramani - Ghatam
S. Kannan - Morching

22/7/2009
N. Shahsikiran and P. Ganesh (Karnataka Brothers) - Vocal
M.A. Sundhareshan - Violin
K. Badri Satish Kumar - Mridangam
Madippakkam A. Murali - Ghatam

23/7/2009
T. V. Shankaranarayanan - Vocal
Mysore V. Srikanth - Violin
Mannargudi A. Eashwaran - Mridangam
B.S. Purushotham - Khanjira

24/7/2009
Kadri Gopalnath - Saxophone
Vittal Ramamurthy - Violin
Trichy B. Harikumar - Mridangam
Gopalakrishnan - Ghatam
Bengaluru B. Rajashekar - Morching

25/7/2009
A.K.C. Natarajan - Clarionet
M.R. Vasudhevan and K.G. Kalyanasundaram - Tavil

26/7/2009
Haridhwaramangalam A.K. Palanivel - Swaralayam

27/7/2009
Madurai T.N. Sheshagopalan - Vocal
V.L. Kumar - Violin
Shrimushnam V. Raja Rao - Mridangam
T.V. Vasan - Ghatam

28/7/2009
P. Unnikrishnana - Vocal
S. Varadarajan - Violin
Shrimushnam V. Raja Rao - Mridangam
T.V. Vasan - Ghatam

29/7/2009
O.S. Arun - Vocal
M.R. Gopinath - Violin
K.V. Prasad - Mridangam
S. Karthik - Ghatam

31/7/2009
Sanjay Subramanyam - Vocal
Nagai R. Muralidharan - Violin
Guruvayur Shre Durai - Mridangam
Kovai Mohan Ram - Ghatam

1/8/2009
N. Ramani - Flute
Nagai R. Muralidharan - Violin
Neyveli R. Narayanan - Mridangam
E.M. Subramaniam

2/8/2009
R. Ganesh and R. Kumaresh - Violin
Ananthakrishna - Mridangam
Trichy Krishna - Ghatam
B. Arunkumar - Morching

3/8/2009
Neyveli S. Radhakrishnan - Violin
Thanjavur R. Govindarajan - Tavil
B. Sri Sundarkumar - Khanjira
N. Guruprasad - Ghatam
A.S. Krishnana - Morching

4/8/2009
Sapthaswaram - Vikku Vinayakram and team

P.S.: With the arrival of Rahul, I don't think I will be able to attend the concerts. I pitty myself.

1. IITH to design inter-disciplinary courses

2. IITK to launch a nano satellite

3. Haryana to open 27 new IITs? (Yes there IS a typo!)

Some time ago, I was requested to be a judge for a technical paper presentation competition. As usual the inauguration started with an invocation from a young lady. Everybody stood up for the invocation and so did I. She started the invocation....

"Maithreem Bhajatha Akila Hrith Jeththreem
Atmavat Eva Paraan api pashyata
Yuddham thyajatha, Spardhaam Tyajata ...."

Now I think.... should I declare the competition null and void?

A few people went into trans immediately. These kind of people see God in everything. So, they see God in the prayer too. It doesn't matter what prayer it is. A prayer is a prayer for them, even if they do not understand the meaning of what is being sung (and the aptness to the situation)!

Some people were nodding (their heads, and some people whole body). The nodding may be because of many reasons, like, they enjoy the music (raaga of the prayer), they understand and appreciate the meaning of the prayer....

Hey wait! Does the young lady understand the meaning of the prayer? Would she have sung this prayer if she were to know the meaning? In a competition? Do the organisers of the competition understand the meaning? By the way, among the people assembled, how many do understand the meaning?

Well, if I am influenced by the prayer, I should be asking the contestants to forsake the competition rather than judging them! But it will be an ugly scene. So I decide- I will not do anything silly this time. If I am requested to be a judge for any other competition in future, I would ask a question- what prayer will be sung during the inauguration?

By the way, the full text of prayer and the meaning can be found here.

Anti-ragging measures: one more legal document has to be signed by the students before getting admission.

UGC tightens Ph.D. norms- at least on paper. The Telegraph reports "..... Specifying minimum standards and procedures to award MPhil and PhD degrees for the first time, the UGC today unveiled plans that could make substandard research tougher!"When are they going to introduce 'standard' research then?

The Telegraph states "The regulations fix admission procedure, ban a research student from picking his own guide...". The second move is a bad one isn't it?

On March 29, my cabinet underwent the second expansion. I am blogging about this expansion late as the name of child (male) was not decided. There was no consensus in our coalition. The deliberations took so long and we decided the name only last week. The name chosen is- Rahul (of course I am a fan of Rahul Dravid). It was my choice. However, the real reason behind this choice is not known to my wife! My wife doesn't read this blog, and hence I am making it known to you all.

Buddha named his son Rahula (Rahul). And to the best of my knowledge, there is no creator-God according to Buddha!

P.S.: In fact we did not perform the nama karana (naming ceremony), rather we chose to send a small amount (of money) to Narayana Hrudayalaya for conducting heart surgery of a poor kid.

The government has announced the names of directors of six new IITs.

After Googling, I could find the following links:

U. B. Desai - IIT, Hyderabad

M. K. Surappa - IIT Punjab

Sudhir Kumar Jain - IIT Gandhinagar

Madhusudan Chakraborty - IIT Bhubaneswar

Anil K. Bhowmick - IIT Patna

Prem Kumar Kalra - IIT Rajasthan

Here is a compilation of 'genuine fake news' from indiadaily.com:

An enormous number of UFO were trying to warn us before Tsunami

Will India reveal the existence of the UFO bases in the moon?

Who transported 7 million tons of earth soil to Mars?

December 21, 2012 the world will change forever

The Brownian motion in nanofluids is attributed to the existence of ET life!

Don't miss this story- India has to make a compromise in order to become a member of UNSC

I am aware of the existence of this genuine site (unlike faking news) since a couple of years. I chose not to provide links to this site (all these days) lest the younger generation is influenced by the 'scientific' superstition the site promotes.

A few days ago, I found a story, which is worth linking! I am not afraid of the promotion of 'scientific' superstition anymore! If you happen to read the story I am referring to, I am sure you would laugh off the site. And that story is a shocking revelation- BJP lost the recent Loksabha elections deliberately after being bribed by the Bush administration!