Working as a Team

It is heart-warming to know that the IT teams in UiTM are working together to consolidate the RU data that are available at various locations. They are forging ahead to form the Executive Information System. Sometimes we have to be told to work together. But in this case, the cohesiveness came naturally as the different groups just facilitate one another to improve the university's data management. Congratulations to the library IT dept, UPENA's Publication Respository Information System Management (PRISMa), the PSMB, the Web Media Unit and the Research Management Institute.

FSPU Research Workshop

As a director of ARI, I was invited by the Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Surveying to share our experience in the setting and the running of the Accounting Research Institute. It was a heartwarming session as I discovered so many potentials and talents within that faculty who wants to do much more. For example, the "Warisan Centre" that has been involved with so many collaborative seminars & workshops, if it can produce say 3-4 books on "Warisan Melayu" every year, it would be such a great contribution to our heritage and country.

Understanding the Terms: Impact Factor....

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Another common term is "impact factor". The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure of the citations to science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the importance of a journal to its field. The Impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), now part of Thomson, a large worldwide US-based publisher. Impact factors are calculated each year by Thomson Scientific for those journals which it indexes, and the factors and indices are published in Journal Citation Reports. The publication of each year covered occurs in the summer of the following year. The impact factor of a journal is calculated based on a two-year period. It can be viewed as the average number of citations in a year given to those papers in a journal that were published during the two preceding years....

Research with Impact: Understanding the Terms

We must know the meanings of some basic terms that determine whether our research publication has "impact". The first term is "Citation Index". According to Wikipedia, a citation index is an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. Wikipedia further notes that in 1960, Eugene Garfield's Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) introduced the first citation index for papers published in academic journals, starting with the Science Citation Index (SCI), and later expanding to produce the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). There are two publishers of general-purpose academic citation indexes:
(i) ISI is now part of Thomson Scientific. Though the ISI citation indexes are still published in print and compact disc, they are now generally accessed through the Web under the name Web of Science, which is in turn part of the group of databases in WoK.
(ii) Elsevier publishes Scopus, available online only, which similarly combines subject searching with citation browsing and tracking in the sciences and social sciences.

Updating of RU Strategic Blueprint

The Pusat Perancangan Strategik (PPS)UiTM organized a follow up meeting with members of the RU Committee at the Bilik Sidang, Canchellery Building today. The meeting was chaired by Prof Kamal Haron and moderated by Associate Prof Dr Nazip. As a follow up meeting, our task was mainly to complete and detail out the Tables that we had drafted in Puncak Alam in May 2009. Some fresh written publication policies were deliberated in details. Once approved, they will be used as a yardstick to measure the key performance indicators of faculties and departments. Basically, all responsibility centres in UiTM are now required to complete the RU forms...

Journal Distributorship

A journal distributor, Innovative Technology Sdn Bhd through its marketing officer Ms Zubaidah had met up with ARI and faculty's journal administrators to discuss of ways to improve the distribution of our three journals: Malaysian Accounting Review, Journal of Financial Reporting & Accounting and the Asia Pacific Management Accounting Journal. The company offers to find prospective clients for the journals through its global network. This is just one of the ways that we could adopt to improve on our journal's readership and citation rate.

Journal Consolidation Meeting

ARI and the faculty have been entrusted with the task of consolidating the university's Social and Management Research Journal. We thank the team headed by Prof Rashidah and hopefully we will be able to submit the journal for possible registration with Scopus this year. The submission deadline is September 2009.

Literature Review with Prof Sakthi

When Prof Sakthi first joined us in 2003, he was a fullbright scholar. We were starting our PhD program. We discovered then that one of Prof Sakthi's greatest forte was to help our PhD students with the literature review activities. He helped the students by guiding them with related reading materials and later on proposed them with possible conceptual framework. He is indeed very good with this. So today, he conducted another literature review sessions with our PhD students. We hope the students have learned a lot from him...

Have You Heard of Journal Editing Services?...

Our RU Committee on Enhancing Citation Rate & Impact Factor had a meeting today. One of our members had suggested the use of the "journal editing service" to facilitate our article publication in Scopus or ISI. Such service is useful particularly for novice writers (seasoned ones as well) whose english competency is relatively low. I found details of one service provider that might be useful for you: http://www.journalexperts.com/. The following texts are part of their promotional line

" American Journal Experts specializes in premium English editing and proofreading for authors wishing to publish their manuscripts in English language journals. Our highly qualified native English editors from the top ten medical and scientific research universities in America perform quality copyediting and proofreading in all areas of science and medicine as well as many additional academic fields. Researchers, publishers, and universities worldwide trust our English proofreading and editing skills to help them publish the best science in the best journals... no matter what country the author is from".

Strategizing for RU....

The university had invited Prof Dr Asma Ismail, the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research & Innovation) USM to give a talk on "Strategies Towards Research University" this morning. In the afternoon, she conducted a workshop on how to fill in the RU form. Participants included the RU Committee, Deans, Deputy Deans and Heads of Centres of Excellence.