Publication Activity
Results of scientific and creative activities at Palacký University are evident in its extensive publication activity, which represents one of the main criteria for assessing the quality and effectiveness of the academic work of individuals and even entire workplaces. UP authors regularly participate in the most prestigious results both nationally and internationally.
A detailed up-to-date assessment of scientific and research activities is presented in the Palacký University Annual Report.
Index of Information on Results of Research and Development (RIV)
One of the tools for evaluating Czech science and research is the Rejstřík informací o výsledcích výzkumu a vývoje (RIV - Index of Information on Results of Research and Development), in which is gathered information on research, experimental development and innovations, on the workplaces in which these take place, and on the individual creators. The most common forms of publications are monographs, original scientific work in scientific periodicals, publications in academic periodicals, contributions to conferences, and reports on research.
The information in the RIV database is supplied by providers of targeted and institutional support from public funds - ministries, the Czech Grant Agency, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic or local governments. RIV content, the procedure for supplying, classification, processing and provision of data is established by law and is the responsibility of the Rada pro výzkum vývoj a inovace - RIVVI (the Section for Science, Research and Innovation of the Czech Government).
This information is used as the basis for drafting state budget expenditures to support the institutional development of research organizations. A comprehensive overview of their output is also provided to the government, public authorities and the public, and allows control of the use of targeted and institutional support.
Web of Science and Scopus
One of the approaches in assessment of scientific work are scientometric indicators that monitor the volume of citations from selected scientific journals, articles, and authors. The most prominent global sources of information in the area of research and development are the databases Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus, containing data on articles, their authors, contents, citation index, and edition information.
The multi-disciplinary bibliography and citation database Web of Science monitors the citation index of academic articles and regularly updates bibliographic data including abstracts of articles from more than 12 500 prominent international scientific and academic journals in all disciplines.
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Its index includes over 60 million records from more than 5 000 publishers. Scopus also features smart tools to track, analyse and visualise research. It is available from the UP network.
Impact factor and AIS
Impact factor (IF) is on of the most important indicators of academic influence of a publication. The coefficient is published in the database Journal Citation Reports, whose producer is the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in the United States. The value is measured in the context of serial publications (journals) and is calculated and published annually.
The Article Influence Score (AIS) determines the average impact of articles of the given journal for the first five years after publishing. Score greater than 1.0 indicates the above-average of the article in the journal. This indicator replaces the previously used impact factor in modern metrics and is also used for bibliometric analysis of articles on the Web of Science under Method 17+.
The calculation of Impact factor is based on citations over three years. It is defined as the ratio of the number of citations that were recorded in the assessed year to all articles published in the given journal during the previous two years. Values above 40 are considered high impact factor values – e.g. the journal Nature had an impact factor of 42 351 in the year 2014, while the journal Science had an impact factor of 31 453. Impact factors for individual years and journals that are included in the Web of Knowledge database can be found at www.isiknowledge.com/JCR.
Hirsch index
The so-called h-index that measures the publication activity of individual authors or groups of authors is calculated from the number of citations from their works published in journals. On the basis of the database Web of Science, the h-index may be calculated for every single academic worker as well as entire institutions. At the present date, the h-index of Palacký University is 104.
The H-index (or Hirsch index) indicates the number of articles (h) with higher or equal number of citations as the number of those articles (h), and expresses the scientific output of a researcher. Similarly to the impact factor the Hirsch index does not compare the performance of authors in all fields and is linked to a scientific discipline. Apparently the highest Hirsch index in physics belonged to Edward Witten, co-founder of superstring theory, whose h-index in 2005 was 110.