Amelie on research and publication strategies

Last week, it was time for the faculty's first school meeting of the year, which the CBH School Faculty Board organises to disseminate information and discuss current issues with the faculty. This semester's first meeting focused on research and publication strategies, and we discussed, among other things, the results of the research quality follow-up conducted in 2025 as part of KTH's quality system for research.

We invited two bibliometric experts from KTHB to the meeting to hear more about the latest annual bibliometric survey and developments over time. CBH School departments and divisions generally have good bibliometric results, with articles that have a high field-normalised citation rate and a high proportion of publications in journals with high field-normalised impact. However, the trend is negative, which is worrying. One theory is that it is increased international competition that is causing us to lose ground, rather than a decline in the quality of our research. However, we need to continue to analyse this bibliometric data and do our best to reverse the trend.

One issue discussed at the meeting was whether we place too much emphasis on the number of publications in doctoral theses, which risks leading to more articles being published, but with less impact. Another issue discussed was that it is not enough to publish a good article to get many citations; one also needs to be active and disseminate one's research results, for example by presenting at conferences.

The Faculty Board plans to organise more activities on the theme of scientific publishing in order to increase knowledge at the school about bibliometrics and how rankings work. I think there were interesting discussions at the school meeting, and the next school meeting in May will focus on educational issues.

/Amelie