The Youth Scholar Academic Salon was recently held at Zhengdong Library, Peiyang Park Campus. Prof. Zhang Li delivered a seminar concerned with research performance evaluation tools, ESI and Incites.
Prof. Zhang started her speech with an introduction to ESI. ESI is the short form of Essential Science Indicators SM, which serves as the ranking system of countries, territories, institutes, scientists and journals in the field of 22 subjects based on Web of Science.
She then emphasized the effectiveness of ESI, that is, by combing the different statistics provided by ESI, students can conveniently determine which subjects of an institute have entered the top 1% in ESI systems, realize the influence ranking of an institute and be aware of research frontiers. ESI has made it possible for college students and professors to gain access to highly cited papers and share the most advanced progress.
Similar to ESI, Incites is a research performance evaluation tool which enables users to analyze institutional productivity and benchmark their output against peers worldwide. However, Incites, according to Prof. Zhang, is more comprehensive and accurate than ESI. Incites provides the output and influence of over 170 countries and territories and more than 6000 standardized research institutes while ESI mainly focuses on the top 1%. It boasts 10 metrics for discipline classification, including ESI classification.
Prof. Zhang is an associate research fellow of library science at TJU. She graduated from the School of Life Science at NKU where she received her Doctoral Degree of Science, after graduation she then worked in RWTH Aachen in Germany.
The Youth Scholar Academic Salon is targeted at enhancing academic communication and is co-organized by the Tianjin University Union, Zhengdong Library, the Scientific Research Institute, the Young Scholars Association, and the Student Innovation Association.
By: Cai Wenting
Editors: Qin Mian and Christopher Peter Clarke
