
Top academic institutions in 2018: normalized - eu
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01924-x
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rotskoff
This is a fairly bizarre way to rank academic institutions. First of all, the
methodology almost entirely neglects computer science because its metric of
success is papers published in top tier journals; computer scientists tend to
submit to conferences (e.g., NeurIPS) and hence get no credit for their work
in this count. However, other fields seem over-represented from the list of
journals---this is likely why Cold Spring Harbor, a very good biological lab
where probably the vast majority of the papers are published in Nature-
approved venues seems to be so elite.

The "normalization" they use divides the proportional count of authors that
have contributed to an article in the "Nature Index" to the total output of
the institution in the sciences, measured by a company called Dimensions. This
has the odd effect of penalizing institutions for publishing outside their
listed journals.

Finally, as an academic, there are some journals on the index that I have
published in, but many venues I have published in did not make their cut.
Sometimes more specialized journals are necessary---one cannot easily publish,
for example, a detailed proof of a theorem in Nature, even if the result is
very important.

List of journals:
[https://www.natureindex.com/faq#introduction1](https://www.natureindex.com/faq#introduction1)

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thanatosmin
The lists, and Nature index, seem like a pretty transparent ploy. Want your
institution ranked well? Make sure you publish with us.

Departments and institutions already fret over US News rankings. I wonder if
we'll see memos encouraging publication in NPG journals if these rankings
become regular.

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mrleiter
As an Austrian, I‘m very happy that the just ten year old IST Institute made
it to second place. What really sets this institute apart is its lack of
departments and thus its organic multi-disciplinary approach and culture. An
approach I personally find very fruitful in my social relationships as well,
as I learn so much from people who do different things than I do. It‘s
enriching in more ways than I imagined.

~~~
nextos
As a non-Austrian doing fairly well at a top university, IST has put Austrian
academia in my list of possible next stops and far higher than much more
prestigious places.

From what I've heard from some fellows, they are doing a really good job at
creating a nice academic place sans all the bullshit that comes associated
with that lately i.e., politics. Probably a fresh start helped.

~~~
mrleiter
I wish you all the best!

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SolaceQuantum
I'm uncomfortable that number of papers was considered part of the quality of
the institution as a whole...

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adium
It was published by Nature. The number of papers is the only metric they care
about.

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camjohnson26
One potential concern with this normalization is that it could boost
institutions with a single world class research group. That group could be
pumping out papers while the rest of the school is average.

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api
Not at all surprised to see Brandeis on there.

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gapo
Is Brandeis supposed to be that good ?

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option
I’ve just finished reading “DNA: the story of a genetic revolution” by J.
Watson, Nobel prize winner, who was a long time director of Cold Spring Harbor
laboratory (number 1 on that list). It is an awesome and very easy overview of
the field which I highly recommend (one of the best books I’ve ever read)

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leftyted
Watson is a very good writer - and funny.

I've heard a lot of unsavory things about him but I've also heard that his
unique perspective led directly to the climate at CSHL which positioned the
lab to be at the center of so many breakthroughs.

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option
more importantly than a good writer, he is great scientist and scientific
leader. It takes a special person to create and/or lead the growth of a
team/lab/institution to world-class level. Somewhat reminds me of M. Kelly
from Bell Labs

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hbarka
I wonder if a calculation similar to the h-index measure could be used rather
than giving each submitted paper equal weight.

