In a recent issue of “Evaluation” Bimonthly, published by the Higher Education Evaluation & Accreditation Council of Taiwan, it was reported that science and technology papers produced by TKU frequently appeared or were quoted in the Web of Science (WOS) in the past one year. The journal published the names of the departments and universities whose academic papers collected or mentioned in the WOS are within the top 20% of all establishments concerned. TKU’s papers account for a good proportion in 8 of the categories found in the WOS, in particular, in Mathematics, Information Technology, and Chemical and Materials Engineering. In these three categories, TKU’s papers are among the top 10 most relevant source of references.

The Council, sponsored by the Ministry of Education (MOE), conducted this survey to analyze over 20 disciplines that cover Physics, Chemistry and Electrical Engineering in the WOS database. They used two indicators: Number of papers appeared and number of times papers had been quoted, to evaluate various departments and universities. They found that TKU’s papers had a decent standing among those produced by the national universities. As national universities usually attract a lot more funding from the MOE, according to Dr. Chien Fan-z, the Dean of the College of Science, TKU can manage to do so well under these circumstances is quite commendable. Apart from shortage of funding, most professors at TKU have a heavy teaching load, he added. Therefore, he is very proud that TKU can nonetheless produce an impressive number of quality research papers.

Then, how good are TKU’s science and technology departments? This evaluation unfortunately does not reflect the performance of each individual department, as it only demonstrates disciplines. For example, in the category of Physics, several disciplines (up to 13) are involved ranging from Math to Astrology, and to Nano Science. Furthermore, some disciplines are not included in the evaluation and they are, for instance, Life Sciences, Architecture, Aerospace Engineering and Water Resource and Environmental Management. Hence, this evaluation is limited in this sense. However, the results do serve as an incentive for TKU to work better. Dr. Yu Gwo-hsing, the Dean of the College of Engineering, points out that TKU performing better in the number of papers appeared than number of papers cited is an indication that the quality of TKU’s research papers has some room for improvement. ( ~Ying-hsueh Hu )