“Wuhan University’s scholars should submit more papers to top international journals and promote the latest research in time so as to enhance WHU’s international popularity.” In April 18th, Thomson Reuters’s research and development director Simon Parrot came to advise on WHU’s global profile.
Simon Parrot counseled WHU through a three-part lecture. He first introduced Thomson Reuters, a world-class information and service provider, which gathers information for specialists ranging from the field of financial markets and risk management to legal, tax and accounting and even media. For instance, Thomson Reuters supplies data for the “Times Higher Education”, a leading source for world university rankings.
Simon Parrot then introduced the process of statistical work in his enterprise. He explained factors in how university rankings are derived. Information provided by Thomson Reuters includes factual data, the results of reputational surveys and research and data on publications. Their data field covers 750 universities in over 70 countries, with thorough reputation research and records of almost all the publications. Thomson Reuters also weighs the importance of certain factors, such as the rate of referenced publications. The first-class factors include teaching, scientific research, article reference, industrial incomes and internationalization with even more specific second-class factors under every coefficient.
He also introduced the geometrical distribution and the index characteristics of the most renowned universities all over the world. The data gathered by Thomson Reuters show that in the recent three years, the average scores of WHU are 24, 29.1, and 31.67. Judging from Thomson Reuter’s first-class weighted factors, WHU’s teaching and knowledge transformation rate is relatively strong while articles reference rate and scientific research capacity need to be improved. Looking at the second-class factor, the reputation for teaching and of scientific research also need improvement.
Simon Parrot put forward three premises for WHU’s growing reputation: firstly, WHU needs to strengthen international cooperation and choose potential partners to cooperate in scientific research; secondly, WHU must increase the use of its scholars’ articles for referencing and encourage research faculties to submit articles to top international journals; thirdly, market the university and researcher’s latest findings.
After Simon Parrot’s presentation, Vice President Shu Hongbing summarized that in order to build up a world-class university with Chinese characteristics, WHU needs to enhance its international reputation by evaluating itself against the world’s top universities and enhancing its academic quality.
(edited by Sijia Hu & Yoni)
