The university’s Office of Academic Research will host a publications workshop from noon to 1 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 9, in the College of Education room CE 303.

The workshop will be facilitated by facilitated by Monty Van Wart, Cynthia Crawford, Luz Ramirez, Amy Leh, Kelly Campbell and Bryan Haddock.

Background for the Workshop: The publication world has been completely transformed in the last ten years as a part of the digital revolution. Today, scholars, journals, departments, and institutions are expected to have up-to-date and detailed metrics on the scope, quantity, and quality of their research output.

These overall trends affect all academic disciplines; however, the specific emphases vary considerably by discipline, as well as by the preferences of accrediting bodies, colleges, departments, and individual academics. Although the new emphasis on metrics can be daunting to understand initially, it provides a wealth of information, consistency, and ease of use when mastered.

Purpose of the Workshop: The workshop will compare and contrast some of the major academic metric data bases: Web of Science data bases (Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index, and Arts and Humanities Citation Index), Scopus, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate (an example of an academic social networking site with its own metric system).

It will review both journal and scholar impact factors, and some of the different ways they are calculated. Finally, it will provide some general guidelines for good usage of metrics for individuals and departments wanting to more effectively integrate current trends into their ongoing practices.

Useful for: The workshop should be especially useful for those preparing for Promotion and Tenure decisions, faculty evaluation committees, chairs and deans, faculty submitting grants and contracts, doctoral students and students intending to go on to doctoral programs, and faculty interested in staying abreast of contemporary trends in academic citation systems.

Lunch will be provided; please RSVP to ccrawfor@csusb.edu.