Recent years have seen the research productivity of the Faculty of Dentistry (FDHKU) burgeon. In the 2006-07 academic year, FDHKU research output reached 4.8 per staff member compared with HKU's mean of 2.2. This put FDHKU into first place! Many researchers believe that producing, and continuing to produce high levels of research is the end of the story. However more and more there is recognition that producing quality research in quantity is just the beginning.
I recently caught up with Professor Samaranayake, "Dean Sam", to discuss with him his views and opinions on research. He is a strong supporter of the Hub, with 110+ articles and items contributed.
Dean Sam described the research culture at FDHKU as being very strong, with results in the 2006 Research Assessment Exercise above those for Hong Kong as a whole, and those of the HKU average. He emphasized that research output is one thing, and the impact of that research is quite another. Research must be made highly visible for its impact to be felt. Choosing the journal or conference in which the research will appear is very important. He also thought that placing research in open access, such as in the Hub, is a very effective means of increasing impact; readership will increase, with more citations correspondingly expected to follow. He was happy to see that the Hub is being further enhanced to show research impact. For example, in this 2000 article below by Dean Sam, the Hub now shows citation metrics and linkage from Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar.
Candida species exhibit differential in vitro hemolytic activities
After the necessity of quality research and impact have been answered, FDHKU sees a need to engage the community, and have established "engagement" as the Faculty's fourth mission. Indeed FDHKU has now established the first ever Knowledge Transfer Centre in HKU headed by a Publishing Manager, Webmaster, Communication and Development Officer, and a Knowledge Transfer Officer. This dovetails nicely with "Knowledge Exchange" (KE), the third theme in HKU's newly articulated vision statement and strategic plan. HKU's KE is defined as,
...the process of engaging, for mutual benefit, with business, government or the community to generate, acquire, apply and make accessible the knowledge needed to enhance material, human, social, cultural and environmental wellbeing.
The HKU Scholars Hub will be further enhanced to become the "database of visible research" for KE, to demonstrate and measure the impact of HKU's KE. The excellent FDHKU researchers and their many items of quality research will be prominently displayed there in open access, for easy and broad discovery by everyone on the planet.
FDHKU and the HKU Libraries recently completed a successful collaboration, in order to make FDHKU research metrics appear in the Hub. HKUL created www.researcherID.com accounts for all FDHKU researchers, and uploaded their publication lists to this site. They were then automatically matched to entries in ThomsonReuters' Web of Knowledge, to enable the harvesting of the resulting metrics into the Hub. One additional benefit is that the general public without paying subscription to ThomsonReuters, can freely see the ResearcherID record of any researcher in FDHKU. Dean Sam's researcherID is at,
http://www.researcherid.com/rid/B-2171-2009
Another product of this work is the small blue boxed "R" icon next to Dean Sam's name above. On mouseover, it will produce a popup on Dean Sam's RID.
A competitor to ThomsonReuters' RID, the Scopus AuthorID for Dean Sam shows even more research,
http://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.url?authorId=7102761002
Finally, Dean Sam left me with this quote, "Research is important. Access to the results of this research is vastly more important. If a tree falls in the forest, with no one to hear, there was no sound. For research to be relevant, its results must be reported and discussed widely. I see the Hub as pivotal in our efforts to maximize FDHKU research and engage the community with our research."
Many thanks Dean Sam!
David Palmer
The HKU Scholars Hub, Manager
18 November 2009
