New four-volume publication Island Studies presented to university library
Publications are the evidence of scholarship and the basis of academic life. Students 'read' for their degree, which implies that a university student's way of life is a path strewn with a variety of 'publications', now both conventional/ hard copy or digital/soft copy.
The academic staff at the University of Malta support their students' academic development by suggesting and critiquing publications, but also by proposing their own. The tenor of an academic profile rests on three 'legs' - teaching, training and mentoring, in the class room, office or lab; outreach and support, to the administration of the University as well as in the wider society; and research, represented by his/her own academic output.
The latter is testimony of academic rigour and research focus, pushing the boundaries of knowledge; it is also a marker of academic excellence, assessed via the quantity and quality of academic work.
The Open Access Repository (OAR@UoM) at the University of Malta Library is the holding site for the academic output of the University of Malta community (and including student theses). A paper, journal article or book is much better known if it is included in a depository like OAR@UoM, from where it is more easily sourced.
Moreover, quick searches using internet search engines demonstrate the 'calibre' of one's publications via their citation record. Scopus, Mendeley, Google Scholar ... each allows open access to any academic's profile, indicating the quantity and quality of his/her scholarship - the latter via the number of (non-self) citations. For example, Google Scholar ranks researchers from particular institutions, including the University of Malta, on the basis of the number of their citations (the number of citations is indicative of both quantity and quality of publications). See: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_org&hl=en&or g=4588726212334080767&after_au thor=I9B5AMT2__8J&astart=10
All this was demonstrated on Friday morning (06.01.2017) when UM Pro-Rector Professor Godfrey Baldacchino presented a copy of his recent four-volume publication entitled Island Studies
(https://www.routledge.com/Island-Studies-4-vol-set/KelmanBaldacchino/p/book/9781138014596 ) to the University Library.
Professor Baldacchino used this opportunity to encourage UM academics to upload their research output on the University’s Institutional Repository OAR@UoM. During the event Godfrey Baldacchino gave a live demonstration of what Google Scholar had to say about UM researchers.