The research analytics folks over at Thomson Reuters are once again running the “Metrics Mania” bracket challenge.
Cameron Crazies doing their thing.
They start with the 64 universities whose teams have made the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and then slice and dice their academic publishing records pair-wise to see which of the best college basketball schools can also kick butt in the academic journals. The contest is based on Thomson Reuters InCites, an analytics site designed to allow institutions to measure research output and benchmark their performance against peers.
Surely, you’re not surprised to learn that Duke is always in the Final Four of Metrics Mania?
How about if I told you we LOST in the finals the last TWO YEARS IN A ROW?
In 2013, Duke made the Final Four. But in that first-ever contest, UC Berkeley beat Harvard by 0.01 points in the finals, which I guess is the Metrics Mania equivalent of a buzzer-beater.
Then in 2014, covered on this blog, we lost to Stanford in the final. (Mascot: anthropomorphized pine tree.)
The 2015 NCAA basketball championship was Duke’s fifth.
Last year — also covered here with waning enthusiasm — we lost to Harvard. (HARVARD?!) but at least our ballers brought home a sweet trophy.
Bitter? Naaaaah, not us. That would be unscientific.
So, what’s it gonna be this year, Thomson Reuters? What combination of measures will put is in our rightful place atop the bracket at the end? The final four face “Category Normalized Citation Impact,” then it’s on to “# of Hot Papers” to pick the winner. We can hardly wait.
My Final Four prediction: Cal, Duke, Michigan, Michigan State. (Remember, this is based on science, not basketball.) Winner? No idea.
Come on back for results right here in two weeks.
UPDATE _ April 6, 2016. Oh yeah, the tournament. We sort of lost track after Duke fell out of the basketball contest. Well, it turns out we fell out of the academic publishing contest too, falling to Yale in the second round over something called “average percentile.”
Let’s see here…
“Winners from this round are determined by the Percentage of International Collaborations. The % of International Collaborations is the number of International Collaborations for an institution divided by the total number of documents for the same entity represented as a percentage.”
The % of International Collaborations is an indication of an institution’s ability to attract international collaborations.”
So there you have it. Our first failure to reach the Final Four in four years. Cal Berkeley won it all for the second time, out-earning Wisconsin on Number of Hot Papers.
Later, Thomson-Reuters.
Post by Karl Leif Bates
