news
Uni subjects ranked
Australian universities well represented
in global ranking of subject areas.
U
NSW Sydney had more subjects ranked in a global league
table of subject areas than any other Australian institution,
while the University of Queensland took out the top spot in
one of the subject areas.
With 38 subjects ranking in the global top 100 of
ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2018,
Scoop or be scooped
Journal rejects ‘first to publish’ mentality.
C
ompeting researchers don’t usually co-author discussion
papers – unless, perhaps, they’re discussing their rivalry.
Such is the case with Jacob Corn and Jin-Soo Kim.
The genome editing researchers (from the University of
California, Berkeley and Seoul National University respectively),
took to PLOS Biology to talk about how the journal’s
new complementary research policy affected them.
Rather than simply trading theoretical words, they illustrated
them, based on their real life ‘scooper’ and ‘scoopee’ experiences.
Corn relayed how he was “nightmarishly” thwarted by Kim, then
saved by PLOS: “On February 21, 2018, the text of the paper was
2
campusreview.com.au
UNSW also had more high-ranked subjects than any other
Australian institution.
These were Civil Engineering, Finance, Instruments Science
& Technology, Library & Information Science, Management,
Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Remote Sensing and Water
Resources.
While the US and China dominated the top spots for each
subject, the University of Queensland (UQ) ranked first in the world
for Mining and Mineral Engineering.
The head of school for the subject, Professor Ross McAree,
said its top position was testament to a high level of industry
collaboration, research quality and impact across the
resources sector.
Both UQ and UNSW had three subjects ranked in the top 10. UQ
was third in the world in Hospitality and Tourism Management and
seventh in Biotechnology.
The Australian National University (ANU) celebrated having
11 subjects rated in the world’s top 50 – it ranked seventh
for Geography and 13th for Automation & Control – while
13 subjects taught at the University of Sydney were among
the top 50.
At number 6, Transportation Science & Technology was the
University of Sydney’s top ranked subject, while Veterinary Sciences
(at 21), Nursing (25) and Education (29) also charted.
Nursing was UTS’s best posting. At equal sixth, it was among four
of the university’s subjects in the top 50.
ShanghaiRanking looked at 54 subjects taught at more than
4000 universities across the globe. ■
finished, and we were putting on the final touches. I emailed a
cover letter and figures to the editor at PLOS Biology to gauge
their interest and was gratified to get a positive response. Two
days later, I was sitting in the Oakland International Airport when
a beautiful paper from Jin-Soo Kim’s lab in South Korea that
anticipated our own work was published…
“I assumed that the work would now be relegated to languish in
a drawer in my lab. That’s when the editor informed me of PLOS
Biology’s new ‘complementary research’ policy. On February 26,
2018, we submitted our paper to PLOS Biology.”
PLOS Biology‘s policy provides that manuscripts that confirm
or extend the findings of a recently published paper remain
eligible for inclusion in the journal. Its editors argue that ‘scooped’
works are valuable: they can act as, and indeed are preferable to,
regular replication studies, as they are inadvertent and therefore
potentially purer.
Corn and Kim support this assertion. Corn speaks of the policy
as one solution to the “reproducibility” crisis in science (the fact
that replication studies aren’t seen as desirable by researchers). He
admits he is guilty of not seeking to merely reproduce others’ work.
“While my lab has personally experienced the frustration
of finding that a paper doesn’t hold up, this has always been
accidental rather than part of a concerted effort at reproduction,”
he wrote.
While this time, he was the scooper, Kim, too, has experienced
the deep pain of being scooped.
“I … will never forget those moments, which still hurt,” he
confided, adding that this can be a career-killer. He sees PLOS
Biology‘s new policy as a win-win. ■