HR4RS stamp
Irene Vega
A total of 30 researchers from the URJC form part of the first classification (June 2022) prepared by the CSIC that includes 5.000 Spanish and foreign scientists, who conduct research in national organizations. According to the institution itself, this ranking It has been carried out "as part of the commitment to gender equality policies" and with the main objective of "increasing the visibility of our researchers and their work using a public access tool that is easy to create and consult and whose coverage is not only much greater, but it is less biased than others commonly used.
This ranking It has been elaborated from the data of the personal public profiles that the researchers have in Google Scholar, a search engine specialized in content and scientific bibliography. The list of the 5.000 female scientists is ordered according to the highest index and secondarily by number of citations. The h-index is the metric used in the scientific field to measure both the productivity and the impact of publication citations.
Among the female scientists at URJC, fifteen of them are from the Higher School of Experimental Sciences and Technology, of which ten researchers belong to the area of Biodiversity and Conservation. “Currently, 18 teachers work in our area, some of them very young, and more than 55% of them are included in this ranking. We believe that the Biodiversity and Conservation Area's policy of incorporating 'high-level' researchers with resumes very competitive has paid off. In addition, the fact that such a large number of outstanding researchers are concentrated in this area, allows us to contribute to giving greater visibility to the Biodiversity and Conservation Area, through its researchers, but also to the Rey Juan Carlos University”, highlights Isabel Martínez Moreno , Professor of Botany.
The list of scientists who have been included in the ranking It is completed by eight researchers from the Faculty of Health Sciences, three from the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences, three from the Faculty of Communication Sciences and one from the Higher Technical School of Computer Engineering. Being part of this classification is an important recognition of their work. "On a personal level, appearing on this list gives you great satisfaction," says María Jesús Alonso, Professor of Physiology, who adds that seeing her name on the list, "along with a good number of excellent researchers, in which it measures the quality of the work you have been doing for many years, it gives you morale. On a professional level, it is a way of giving visibility to the research that is done on a daily basis”.
For her part, Professor Isabel Martínez agrees that “logically, it is a recognition of the work done. I feel happy and proud to be there. We cannot forget that in addition to being researchers, we are teachers and assume management positions, without forgetting those other tasks that women generally assume outside the workplace. For this reason, being among the 5000 most outstanding scientists in our country, I believe, has even more value in the case of researchers who work in universities”.
To continue expanding this list, the CSIC encourages researchers to create their Google Scholar profile, including the ORCID and RoR identifiers and keeping their publication directory updated. Likewise, professor María Jesús Alonso encourages other classmates to “although they have to spend a little time compiling the information to complete this profile, to do so, without a doubt. In my specific case, I have recently completed it, as a result of a training course offered by the university that dealt precisely with this aspect, how to give visibility to our research work”.
In this sense, Isabel Martínez underlines that “numerous works and scientific studies have shown that women researchers do not have the same opportunities as our colleagues and one of the main problems is the lack of visibility. Women are invited less to give plenary lectures, they grant us fewer research projects, they cite fewer of our articles, they give us fewer prizes, etc. Let us all contribute to increasing the visibility of our work and to eliminate the gender gap that still exists in the field in which we work”.
In this first edition, the CSIC heads the ranking as the most represented organization with 633 profiles, followed by the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) with 292, the University of Barcelona (UB) with 218, the University of Granada (UGR) with 208 and the University of Valencia (UV) with 138. In addition, there are 162 female researchers who indicate foreign affiliations. In total there are about 500 institutions represented.