In the right direction: UM’s electrical and electronic research earned the highest scores among Malaysian universities for citations per paper and h-index in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022.
IN academia, the impact of one’s research work can be assessed in a number of ways, one of which is the number of citations garnered.
The higher the citations for a research paper, the more impactful and credible one’s research is, said Universiti Malaya (UM) vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Mohd Hamdi Abd Shukor.
He was commenting on the varsity’s electrical and electronic research, which has earned the highest scores among Malaysian universities for citations per paper (100%) and h-index (96.4%) in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022.
“An indication of our research being impactful is when it becomes a reference to other researchers. We take this as an acknowledgement that our Strategic Plan and our Transformation Plan are guiding us in the right direction,” Prof Mohd Hamdi said in a recent press release.
To ensure the work of its researchers is relevant and impactful to the larger global community, the varsity has taken a number of initiatives to enhance its performance management system.
“This year, we hope to develop and support five high-impact special projects and an additional 15 special projects category II. A special project is a university-led effort that is developed to address critical areas with significant impact on the country and international communities,” he shared.
“We are also seeking to involve more of our researchers and students in commercialisation as that can prove that our inventions or innovations are not only sound theoretically, but can also be developed and marketed in the real world,” he said.According to Prof Mohd Hamdi, UM established six new deep tech start-ups last year, and has in training 10 deep tech start-ups and five students’ start-ups.
“We also managed to get 67 patents granted. I am glad to say that our start-ups do not only seek financial returns, but also huge impact that solves societal problems,” he said.
Overall, UM is placed among the top 140 in all five broad subject areas in this year’s edition of the rankings which considered 1,543 universities across 51 academic disciplines.
UM showed improvement in rank in each broad subject area: Engineering and Technology is ranked 45th, up nine spots from last year; Social Sciences and Management 50th, up 35 spots; Arts and Humanities 84th, up 21 spots; Natural Sciences 113th from 166th; and Life Sciences and Medicine 138th from 179th.
A total of 17 of UM’s 37 individual subjects ranked by QS made it into the Top 100, an increase in two subjects from last year’s performance.
Of the subjects considered, 51 per cent improved their positions, while 38 per cent remained in the same rank.
Five components were used to assess universities in the rankings: academic reputation; employer reputation; research citations per paper; h-index; and International Research Network (by broad-faculty area).
UM’s best performance in academic reputation was in Geography (76.2%), while its Communication and Media Studies scored the highest (81.1%) in employer reputation.
