Journal Impact Factor (or pissing contest for academics)

 

The comic strip above from PhD comics is a very humorous take on impact factor (IF) (although I believe most of the items included in the equation are TRUE).

Elsevier has recently released new metrics for journal impact factor. Three new computations are being introduced as better methods of assessing the importance of the journals and published articles.

The three rankings are:

• SNIP - Source Normalized Impact per Paper
• SJR - SCImago Journal Rank
• IPP - Impact per Publication

Universities and funding agencies reward researchers who get published on Journals with very high impact factors, such as Cell, Nature, Science, Molecular Cell, Nature Genetics, Lancet. Getting published in any of these journals signals that you have arrived as a researcher, which of course translates to opportunities (grants, seats on prestigious committees or boards, consultancies).

Exactly because of the importance of impact factor (IF) that a lot of researchers have also looked at the way IF was being computed. The three ranking methodologies above are a move towards a more realistic assessment of the actual value of the journals and published articles.

My only complaint in all of this as a researcher is the absence of engineering journals at the top of the list. Based on SJR's website, the science journal with the highest SJR is Annual Review of Immunology (SJR = 30,095), for mechanical engineering it's International Journal of Plasticity (SJR = 3,675), for electrical and electronics engineering it's IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (SJR = 8,094).

When I have the time in the future, I would take a close look at the various ranking computation and try to figure out why engineering journals rank very low on the impact factor ladder. 

Nature of work has changed... and so should our concept of work-life balance

Back when I was a university student, I was scolded by a senior for being a too busy and worry-wart that lines started to appear on my forehead at the age of 17. I was told that I should take a breather and not work all the time. That maybe I should stop letting work define me.

Well, she was right. I had to take a breather. But her statement on equating my self-worth with work is something that bothered me ever since. I couldn't agree with it, but I didn't disagree with it either. I hold it as a reminder not to overwork myself. However, I did enjoy what I was doing.

Two recent articles from the economist brought back this issue to my attention:
Harvard Blog Review:  Don't let career cause regrets in your personal life
Economist: Nice work if you can get out

The first article's gist is clear from the title. However, the author mentioned that maybe, we can mix personal and work life. We don't have to have a very clear separation of the two.

The second article shows some statistics that people who earn more tend to take fewer vacations (leisure time). He posed a question though -- has work become enjoyable that people do not need to take as much leisure time as before? Interesting.

Back in high school, I learned of Dignity of Labor from Laborem Exercens, an encyclical by Pope John Paul II that

THROUGH WORK man must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same family. And work means any activity by man, whether manual or intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances; it means any human activity that can and must be recognized as work, in the midst of all the many activities of which man is capable and to which he is predisposed by his very nature, by virtue of humanity itself. Man is made to be in the visible universe an image and likeness of God himself, and he is placed in it in order to subdue the earth. From the beginning therefore he is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth. Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons. And this mark decides its interior characteristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature.

My friends and I used to tease each other with this teaching by saying, "dangal sa paggawa" (dignity of labor), to mean that we have no choice but to do whatever it is that we have to do (ie, we cannot wish away our problems and tasks). It was a juvenile perspective on work, but something that I continue to strongly believe in.

It is good to be reminded not to ruin personal life with work, otherwise, we would suffer for it. After all, the most important things in life involve your loved ones, not work. (But what if your loved ones are part of your work?). I hope you would find time to read the HBR article as it has a few interesting points.

However, I must admit that I enjoy the guilty pleasures of work, especially since I can mix my work time with personal time (I can work from home, I can work anywhere, and I don't have to work 8am-5pm). I may be one of the lucky few who can do this. Or I may be part of the statistics mentioned in the Economist article that has a work that is enjoyable.

Just a reminder:

The Choice

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.
- William Butler Yeats

The right platform for blogging

A few years ago, I moved my blog and personal website to Wordpress.com. Blogspot was difficult to customize and new features were slow to come by. Then social media happened and I started posting fewer and fewer articles on my blog, opting instead to share ideas and articles via Google+. 

However, after almost a year of relying on Google+, I just realized that it is really not a blog. It was not meant to be. It is a social platform, meant for sharing content rather than a repository. However, I still need to post long articles from time to time, articles that must include more than one image and easily searchable in the archive. These last two are not available in Google+.

On the other hand, the integration of G+ with Blogspot made me decide to come back. After writing an article, it is easier to share via G+. Sharing photos in Blogspot is also a breeze, so is comment management. Hence,  I'm reimporting my wordpress account to Blogspot and soon I will shut it down soon.

UPDATE (as of 2014 April 6): 
Importing Wordpress.com XML file to Blogger/Blogspot is not straightforward. Blogger does not recognize the tags used by Wordpress. Thus, XML from Wordpress has to be converted first via this link:

http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/

Warning though, it only works with 1MB of data. If your XML file is larger than 1MB, you have to split it. And mine is 1.7MB.

Instead of getting annoyed, I think this is an opportunity for me to prune my blog entries. I have been meaning to remove some of them. Maybe this is the time.

When justice is not abstract

Coming from a country with very slow justice system, I learned quite early that poor people never gets justice as the wealthy have the money to hire prestigious lawyers (abogado de campanilla), the time to wait for the conclusion of lawsuits (usually decades), and the gall (and money as well) to hire third parties (intimidators or contract killers) to resolve disputes. The rich has the whole justice system in their hands, starting with the police all the way up to the magistrates.

All along, I thought justice had nothing to do with business. I was so wrong.

Starting up a business in Singapore, a country well regarded for its efficiency and rule of law, taught me that justice is a human construct that should pervade every aspect of society. For without a fully functioning justice and law enforcement system, anarchy reigns. If you're a businessman, that means contracts are not enforceable, property rights are unprotected, conflicts take forever to get resolved (if ever), and standards in any transactions or processes are based on the whims of those implementing.

That list of complains can actually be summarized in a word -- trust. Justice is the social construct that enables trust to grow. And without trust, social interaction of any sort, especially those that will involve exchange of valuables, is not possible.

Let me draw some examples based on our recent experience.

It takes 30 minutes to register a business in Sg (Singapore) but 2 weeks in Ph (Philippines). To get the certificate if incorporation in Ph, you have to fall in line for a day or two and hope that whoever signs the certificates are not busy lest you get told to come back the next day again. In Sg, everything happens online and we paid using credit card, all from the comfort of home.

To get permits from the other government agencies, you'll get reminder from relevant departments in Sg. In Ph, you'll only know which permit you lack at a critical moment just when you badly needed them.

It takes one dollar (32 pesos) to start a company in Sg but in Ph, you may be required to put up a capital of varying amounts (which sometimes look so arbitrary).

I can go on and on, but running a business does not end at incorporation. Actually the importance of justice and trust is even more important once business starts.

Imagine if one of your clients decide to swindle you. In the Ph, filing a case at a court takes a lot of time and money (especially when the judge and the client's lawyers are good friends). Even if you win the court case you'll have to share whatever you can claim with the police, otherwise they won't carry out the court's decision. In Sg, a business case filed in court can get resolved within a year if not sooner. And implementing court decisions is easier as well.

Back in college, discussing topics like justice and inequality, in the light of philosophy, theology, and other academic subjects, have become an intellectual exercise for me. Starting up a business in two different countries made me relearn those lessons, this time with my hands, heart, head and bank book in tow.

So, what's the story?

Back in Japan, I used to assist in Technical Presentation and Technical Writing courses. Students were taught how to make their presentations/papers better. Topics covered range from grammar to powerpoints to proper pronunciation; they learned details of how to produce good materials. At the end of the semester though, most of them still delivered mind-numbing presentations and undecipherable papers. I thought the students were struggling with the language as they were mostly Japanese, but then when I moved to Singapore, where the medium of instruction is English, I still encountered the same drudging presentations and papers. It's not the language and it's not the technique. It's even simpler than that. In most of those materials, there is no story.

I've sat through a couple of presentations this week and reviewed two papers for an international conference. In all instances, I was bored to death. I almost fell asleep at one of the presentations and it took me two days to get through a 6-page paper as I couldn't get past the first two incomprehensible pages. While listening/reading, I kept asking myself, what's the story? Tell me a story instead of giving a bunch of technical mambo-jumbos.

Why is it too difficult to make a presentation that presents a technical topic in a story format? I realized presentations and papers can even follow the fairy-tale format, something that even young kids will understand. Consider these parallels between a fairy-tale and a technical presentation as a complete story arc:

• In a land far far away... >> Current situational context (social, technical, etc)
• Then an evil witch suddenly appears... >> The problem to be solved (technical, social)
• But there's a reluctant hero who can save the land... >> State of the art but with gaps
• The reluctant hero needs to get a magic sword... >> The proposed method that can improve state-of-the-art and solve the problem
• The reluctant hero battles the witch... >> Experimental or simulation details/results
• The hero prevails and the witch is vanquished... >> Discussion
• And they live happily ever after... >> Conclusion

If that seems too many to follow, consider these:

• What's the current situation and what seems to be the problem?
• Why do you want to solve it and what's your solution?
• Convince me with your result.

Dear students, please heed this advice. The next time you write a paper or prepare a presentation, ask yourself, what's the story that you want to share? And then write/tell it like a fairy tale.

As I strongly believe, proper story-telling is fundamental to sharing, discussing, and discovering ideas, which is what research is all about.