What to do to have a scientific article published in the Web of Science?

June 23, 2016

     This question and other challenging for Ukrainian researchers issues, such as training of Masters and PhD students, organization of research and academic activities at university, professional development and scientific advancement, became the key topics of lectures and discussions during the International scientific and practical seminar "How to become a successful scholar at the international level", held on 15-17 June 2016 at NUBiP. 

  

      During their talk, honorary lecturers of the seminar, Prof. Jacek Koziel (State University of Iowa, USA) and Dr. Jacek Markowski (Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences, Poland) provided the participants with practical recommendations.

     The language of the seminar was English. However, for more accurate understanding of the content, the lectures of foreign scholars were accompanied by presentations with slides previously translated into Russian.
     Thus, the participants with not very good command of English were able to easily understand the speakers, analyze the material submitted and make important conclusions. 

      For example, Prof. Jacek Koziel focused on some typical errors which should be avoided when preparing a scientific publication: You haven’t set aside a specific time for writing. You set aside a wrong time for writing. You have no idea how long writing tasks take. You think that you have to do everything yourself. The tasks you have set out are too complex. You can’t remember what you have to do. Your space is disorganized. 
     The main strategies of successful scientific publication are: to publish in best journals in your discipline, to use recent articles as a template, to emphasize significance and novelty, to avoid paying money to publish in Open Access, to volunteer to review articles in order to learn how to write your own articles.
     The participants of the seminar held by an American professor analyzed the reasons why editors accept some papers for publishing and why they reject others. 

      Below is a list of recommendations on how to prepare a good article: carry out a detailed literature review using the portal Web of Science; address the need/gap clearly, know where best scientists in your field publish; think of excellent title and abstract of the article. These recommendations seem to be clear and obvious. However, the authors do not actually follow them when submitting articles to the leading foreign journals. As a result, NULES of Ukraine has a low ranking of scientific publications in high-ranking journals included in Web of Science database (Table 1).

Table 1.  Comparative data on scientific publications in Iowa State University and some universities in Poland and Ukraine

 

University

Number of publications in 2015 (Web of Science)

World ranking in 2015, QS

Academic ranking of world universities (2015)

Times Higher Education world university ranking

(2015-2016)

USA (total)

1 685 000

 

 

 

Iowa State University

7 678

355

151-200

251-300

Poland (total)

91,800

 

 

 

Jagiellonian University (Cracow)

7 040

411-420

301-400

601-800

Warsaw University of Life Science (SGGW)

370

-

-

-

Wroclaw University of Environment and Life Science

200

-

-

-

Ukraine (total)

12 860

-

-

-

National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine

24

 

 

 

Lviv National Agrarian University

10

 

 

 

 

      So we’ve got what to strive for. Indeed, without publications in international journals in Web of Science there is no chance to get an international grant, which fact to some extent explains the small number of research grants received by Ukrainian scientists.
     However, the scientists of NULESU have got 24 publications and we have to attain to the level of the best!

     Prof. Jacek Koziel also drew attention to the need for mutual exchange of experience. In his series of speeches, he mentioned the activities of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the University of Iowa. The goal of the Centre is to support, promote and improve the efficiency of teaching and student learning at the university. The spread of best practice in learning and teaching resulted in a "cultural change" of the leading university. The Center employs specially selected staff and uses special programs to improve teaching competencies of faculty and graduate students. And every teacher who seeks to make a career at the university has to take a corresponding methodological training, which includes not only acquisition of certain knowledge in subjects and demonstration of practical pedagogical skills and application of interactive methods, but also designing your own online course.
In addition to the theoretical part, the program of the seminar included the practical part.
     Associate professor Victoria Arestenko introduced the participants to some major international scientific portals and the registration procedure, and they had an opportunity to create their personal profile on Research Gate.

     Liudmyla Dankevych held a workshop on Academic English and gave the participants some recommendations on how to write a good abstract of their paper in English. 

      At the end of the seminar the foreign lecturers awarded the participants with international certificates. 

 

Natalia Demeshkant,
Head of Center for Professional Personnel Development
Liudmila Dankevych,
Senior lecturer Department of English Philology 

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