In Japanese universities, we are frequently asked to submit a list of publications for evaluation purposes. It was said that such a task would be automatically made as long as we properly maintain the database organized by the university. (This is the link to the database.) Indeed, we are periodically asked to add newly published papers and invited talks into the database. Then the officers will extract something useful from the database for their own usage. However, it seems not to work. They ask us to submit the list of papers and talks, not via the university database but according to the SciVal… I have no idea what is happening. In addition to the database for each university, we also have a national database for researchers. Why we need such a redundancy?
Nevertheless, due to such a situation, I played with SciVal and found something interesting. The database tells the list of top researchers during the period from 2009 to 2019 in rheology (worldwide, TC. 801 Rheology; Fluids; Shear Flow) as shown below. This ranking is according to the number of publications in the database, and the numbers at the rightmost row indicate it. The top 3 professors are from Canada, and they are very famous. Interestingly, the top 2 professors are theoretician, and Prof Hatzikiriakos in the 3rd position makes both theory and experiment. In this respect, theoretical development seems still strong in rheology. I am happy to find myself in the 6th position, which is the best among the Japanese rheologists.
Click here for the larger image.
I further looked at the various rankings in the related fields and finally found that I am in the 1st position in T. 2372 Polymer Melts; Extensional; Shear Viscosity. The ranking is shown below. The second column shows the number of citations during the corresponding period.
Click here for the larger image.
Although I am delighted and proud of it, I have found that the ranking seems incorrect. For instance, in the list above, in the 6th position, there is “Watanabe Hirotsugu.” It must be “Watanabe Hiroshi,” and this mistake means that the ranking is not based on the accurate counting of the achievements. Indeed, I believe that the people on the list have much more publications during the last decade. Besides, in the first table, lots of very famous rheologists are missed. I am a fraud champ in these aspects.
Nonetheless, the researchers are always in competition, and the databases make it further tougher because our contributions are quantified for comparison to the others. Like tuna, if we stop swimming, we will die.