Researcher Connect

In the Front of Research: Newly Emerged Topics for 2024 and HKU Contributions

— by Vivian Qiu 1. Introduction 1) Research fronts A research front can be conceptualized as the convergence of scientific discoveries and societal interests, with new findings leading to further discoveries [1]. Understanding research fronts can help researchers identify key areas for future exploration, thereby enhance the capability of researchers to contribute meaningfully to their disciplines and…

Research Impact beyond the Academia 2: Policy Citations

— by Chloe Ng In the previous post, we discussed the use of patent citations as alternative metrics to measure research impact beyond academia. In this post, we will focus on policy citations, which try to showcase the impact of research on policy, law and regulation. Policy Metrics Policy documents refer to documents prepared by…

Research Impact beyond the Academia 1: Patent Citations

— by Chloe Ng Introduction Citation metrics, which measure the number of citations a publication receives from other scholarly publications, are commonly used as indicators of research performance. However, these metrics often fall short in capturing the broader societal impacts of research. This blog post explores alternative indicators of impact, providing insights from patent citations…

Mega Journals 2: Promising or Predatory?

— by Fanny Liu Introduction In the previous post, we discussed major characteristics and the niche of mega journals, such as open access, wider scope, soundness only peer-review and higher acceptance rates. In this post, we will focus on some controversies. Concerns “Soundness-only” peer review: Yet to be defined? Senior executives and editors of mega…

Mega Journals 1: Inception and Ideal

— by Fanny Liu Introduction Since the establishment of PLOS ONE in 2006, a number of mega journals emerged, such as BMJ Open, IEEE Access, PeerJ, Scientific Reports, and more. While mega journals have secured a niche in scholarly publishing, there are also concerns and controversies. Characteristics Mega journals have some major characteristics (Björk, 2021;…

Opening the Gates: HKU Authors’ Odyssey in Open Access Publishing

— by Fanny Liu Introduction Similar to last year, this year we present an overview of open access publications by authors from the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Data Source Data were extracted from InCites on 11 February 2025. Publications included documents indexed in InCites Dataset (with ESCI) and with organization name “University of Hong…

Viewing HKU Research Through the SDG Lens

— by Chloe Ng Continuing from our previous blog posts1 in presenting HKU’s research contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this year’s post tracks HKU research performance across the 16 SDGs2 during 2019-20243, and explore changes in individual SDGs and topics over time. HKU Publications Contributing to Sustainable Development Of the 48,284 scholarly outputs…

Access, Author Rights, and Agreements 2: HKU Author’s Choice of Creative Commons Licenses

— by Fanny Liu Introduction In the previous post (Access, Author Rights, and Agreements 1: Which Creative Commons License Works the Best for an Author?), we discussed the different Creative Commons licenses and publishers’ licensing agreements. In this post, we will focus on the choices made by HKU (the University of Hong Kong) researchers. Choice…

Access, Author Rights, and Agreements 1: Which Creative Commons License Works the Best for an Author?

— by Chloe Ng As illustrated in the previous blog post (Open Access in Progress: An Overview of Participation of HKU Authors in Open Access Publishing), more and more HKU authors are publishing their research outputs open access. When an author submits manuscripts to journal publishers, one of the important decisions to make is selecting…

Flourish: Visualizing Data in an Easy and Engaging Way

— by Vivian Qiu Flourish is an online data visualization tool that can help turn complex datasets into engaging and informative visuals in an easy way. In this blog post, we will introduce what Flourish could do for you, its advantages and how to use it. 1. What is Flourish Flourish empowers users to transform…