Hue University – the educational institution has just climbed place in the university rankings.
Joyful signals
By the end of July 2019, Cybermetrics Lab of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has just released the World University Webometrics Ranking (2 times per year). It is encouraging that compared with the January 2019 ranking, Hue University increased by 2 places among Vietnamese higher education institutions, ranked 8th in the country and 3,780th in the world. Worthy of note that if previously (in January) only 132 universities in Vietnam participated in the ranking, this time there will be 180 universities, which is more competitive.
Compared with other regional universities in the country, Hue University is second only to Can Tho University (ranked 3th) and above other universities such as Vinh University (9th), Danang University (13th), Thai Nguyen University (20th), University (91st), Central Highlands) University (100th)... This is a praiseworthy signal of the educational institutions in the ancient capital.
According to Hue University leaders, the university rankings are based on many criteria. In particular, there are 4 main criteria: the presence (the number of websites belonging to the main domain name of the higher education institution); degree of visibility or impact level (the number of external networks linked back to higher education institution websites); openness (the number of citations from top 100 authors, determined by Google Scholar) and excellence or academicity (the number of articles in the top 10% cited in 26 fields).
Among the criteria, Hue University also had significant improvements. Notably, the openness criterion increased sharply from 5,041 (in January 2019) to 3,938 (in July 2019) in the world.
This criterion relates to the number of citations calculated by Google Scholar (an online scientific database). From the end of May 2019, Hue University formulated the policy to promote the presence of scientists on online scientific databases, Google Scholar included, and the number of the records on these scientific databases increased from 85 (in May 2019) to 112 (in July 2019). The evidence shows that initially the policy of Hue University proves to be effective.
The officials and students of Hue University joined in research at the University of Agriculture and Forestry
Towards higher rankings
University ranking is a measure of prestige and quality of an educational institution. Higher ranking is an encouraging signal, but in reality, Hue University’s climbing 2 places is not a certainty in distance because the fluctuation in ranking often happens. This problem shows that a stable strategy for higher ranking is needed.
Assoc.Prof.Dr. Pham Khac Lieu, Deputy Head of Science, Technology and International Relations Department of Hue University, said that Hue University's ranking could actually improve more, but there was regrettably the ranking data dispersion. Because the transformation of domain names (unified in Hue University) has been being made and not yet finished, part of data was not counted when Webometrics updated.
Therefore, in the July 2019 rankings, along with Hue University, there are also 5 member universities: Universities of Economics, Agriculture and Forestry, Medicine and Pharmacy, Pedagogy and Arts separately ranked by Webometrics, not collectively included in Hue University.
Assoc.Prof.Dr. Bui Dinh Hoi (left), one of Hue University's scientists, has a large number of research projects published in the ISI international journal.
Currently, according to the criteria by Webometrics, the international publications account for 35%. The more publications there are, the higher the marks are. The data published in the international scientific list of WoS (ISI) and Scopus of Hue University within 10 years (2009-2018) show that the number of international publications increased steadily over the years.
By the end of July 2019 alone, Hue University had 144 projects published in the international journal on the list of WoS (ISI) and 181 projects on the list of Scopus. The above evidence partly predicts that there will be more positive signals.
According to the representative of Science, Technology and International Relations Department of Hue University, in order to increase the achievements of the international publication of scientific research projects, Hue University is developing the reward and benefit policies for scientists. In particular, the significant incentives are expected for the authors whose articles are influential, effective and have high citation index.
Recently, Hue University has also issued the regulations on Hue University-level projects. If the projects and themes registered have international articles, there will be a mechanism for more funding support. This is a solution for promoting public international publication, thereby contributing to increasing the position in the university rankings.
Story and photos: Huu Phuc