The Lubin Files

"Publish or Perish." A tool for citation analysis

Citation analysis investigates the number of times an article or an author has been referred to by others in the field of scholarly literature.  It can be used to judge the impact an author or a publication has had upon its peers.  FAO staff members often use citation analysis as part of the auto-evaluation process. 

Historically, the only tools available for citation analysis are ones such as the (extremely costly) ISI Web of Science or the Elsevier Scopus database.  We here at FAO do not have access to Web of Science, but we do have a subscription to Scopus.  Having access to either of these databases does not answer every need that we have at FAO, however. Due to the nature of the type of publications that FAO produces, many of them are just not searchable in the usual places.

I just recently witnessed the demonstration of a citation analysis tool called Publish or Perish that looks to be promising for FAO staff who are looking to judge the effectiveness of their work.  This tool is free to download, and it runs on input from Google Scholar.  As I mentioned above, no citation analysis tool is without flaws, however, Google Scholar may provide insight into the kind of publications produced by FAO that often fall between the cracks of the traditional analysis tools.

Publish or Perish calculates statistics based on the following metrics:

Total number of papers
Total number of citations
Average number of citations per paper
Average number of citations per author
Average number of papers per author
Hirsch's h-index and related parameters, shown as h-index and Hirsch a=y.yy, m=z.zz in the output
Egghe's g-index, shown as g-index in the output
The contemporary h-index, shown as hc-index and ac=y.yy in the output
Two variations of the individual h-index, shown as hI-index and hI,norm in the output
The age-weighted citation rate
An analysis of the number of authors per paper

You can read a detailed comparison of Google Scholar with ISI Web of Science here.

Tech tips for the basic computer user

It took me a couple of months to figure out that you press function-F11 in order to switch to the dekstop on a Macintosh.  And then after I figured it out, I forgot it...

Every time I find one of these lists, I see something that I didn't know.  This is a pretty good one.  It includes not only computer advice, but also basic internet common sense, like:

Nobody, but nobody, is going to give you half of $80 million to help them liberate the funds of a deceased millionaire…from Nigeria or anywhere else...

This list comes from a technology blog on the New York Times.  I'm sure that each one of us knows something that somebody else hasn't heard of before...

Living a Second Life

I just read about Second Life this morning, in this article about library marketing, published by Sirsi/Dynix.  Here is what the article has to say about it:

• IBM has 400(!) employees working on environments for this site. Companies, libraries, and charities are having early successes here. Check out the libraries in Second Life for Alliance Library System, Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County, McMaster University, etc. Check out American Cancer Society and March of Dimes presences.
• I am told that every U.S. presidential candidate has a presence here. Indeed, John McCain’s Second Life site was vandalized by a feces-spewing robot.
• Think about this for orientations, events, education, walk-in book tours, author events, teen outreach, etc.

The subject of Second Life came up again over coffee this morning.  A friend of mine referred me to this article, "Living a Second Life," published in the Economist Magazine.

The Future of Facebook

Time Magazine interview with Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the Facebook social utility.

E - networking

This month's "Two Work: The UN Dual Career and Staff Mobility Newsletter" has an interesting article on e-networking.

Google Desktop

NB: Only approved software is allowed to be installed on your FAO computer

Unfortunately, we don't have permission to install Google Desktop search on FAO computers, but they have added such great new features that I felt the service deserved a blog posting anyway.

I have had Google Desktop installed on my home computer for a year or so.  It indexes all the files on your computer and it searches them much faster and much more efficiently than the built-in Microsoft search utility.  About a week ago, they upgraded the look and feel of it. It now integrates your desktop with RSS feeds for items such as news, weather, and frequently visited sites. 

The best improvement to this service is the possibility to simultaneously search all files on every computer where you have installed Google desktop.  For example, if you were theoretically able to install the service on your work computer, you could execute a search from your office and find files that you had accessed the night before from your computer at home.

Google Desktop searches Word files, Excel files, emails, and your web browsing history.

A list of FAO approved non-standard software can be found here.

Google Maps - Street Level Images

Google has added a new dimension of imagery to its maps.

For New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami, you can now click the "Street View" option.

Do I find this useful?  Yes, and no.  The idea is a great one, but in practice, I find it a bit clunky.   It's not easy to position the street level icon precisely on the street that you want to display.  And it's a bit awkward to move back and forth along the street from within an image.  But it is possible.

Have a look at this blog entry for more issues concerning privacy, etc.

Library databases from home

Did you know that you can access library databases like Proquest and the Economist Intelligence Unit from home?

As long as you have a username/password for FAODOMAIN (most people at headquarters) then you can access the library homepage from the Nokia box.

Following to the links to the databases from the library homepage will connect you no matter where you are.

See this page for more information on the Nokia box.

FAO Administrative Resource Management System

The FAO Administrative Resource Management System brings together Oracle Financials and Human Resources Management System in one unique access environment.

From 24th April, 2007, an additional functionality will be provided to allow people to view their April payslips.

After April 2007, all payslips will be generated through this system and the general distribution of paper copies to individuals will cease, except for those who do not have access to a PC or for whom access to the system is not possible.

Log on to the system here.  Staff members new to FAO Administrative Resource Management System should have received an email with their new account and password.

For more information and details about user training, see the following intranet page.

Sorting with Gmail:Labels, Cont...

Back in January, I wrote an entry about the label function in g-mail.  I lamented that you can't just file your mails into folders, and instead can only label them.

After having used them for awhile, I have to admit that they're growing on me.  It's just like tagging.  It doesn't make a mess if you have a label with only one e-mail attached to it, and you can easily apply multiple labels to the same e-mail.  It's also easy to batch-edit your labels.

The only thing that I still haven't seen is an intuitive way to view your e-mail sorted by label.  You still have to type label:friends in order to see all your friends e-mail.  I haven't been able to find a way around it.