About Al-Ayen Award

Based on the previous award adopted by the Al-Ayen University, which had a major impact on the national level, the University is willing to make this a recurrent yearly event, by suggesting a ranking metric that is purely innovative and impactful.

The AIR-Ranking aims to

1. Deliver a national recognition for the Iraqi researchers.

2. Pursue more confidence in their scientific achievements.

3. Honor those who worked inconclusively to promote the Iraqi researcher image in the international domain.

4. Motivate younger researchers who need to see their persistence in achieving high-quality research output will not go unnoticed.

5. Reshape the Iraqi researcher's image on a global scale.

The Conditions of award

A group of highly-skilled members was assigned to the award task and they worked to make the award as accurate and unbiased as possible. However, the required data were collected up to 01-Dec-2021 with the following conditions:

1. The researcher must be of Iraqi nationality and work currently in Iraqi affiliation.

2. In the Scopus database, the researcher must have published at least 12 research papers in 2021, and have at least an H-index of 12.

3. In the Web of Science (WOS) database, the researcher must have at least an H-index of 6.

4. Researchers who meet the selection criteria above are nominated for the award.

Figure 1: Academic and Scientific databases for Al-Ayen award

The scientific community is always interested in developing a global reach for scientific work. This is to be explored in terms of several research outputs including

• Published work in high-impact journals
• Published work in high-standard conference series
• Reviewing for academic journals
• Editorial contribution for national and international journals
• Researcher metrics

From Figure 1, a clear image of the selected databases that formed the AIR-Ranking conditions and criteria

• Scopus Database: This is a widely used database for academic work, it includes a special identifier for any researcher who publish his/her work in a journal which in enlisted in the database. This identifier is unique to the researcher and therefore can not be generated randomly and inaccurately, in addition, the information provided include highly-detailed data for consumption, analysis and comparison. This database is now globally recognized and has a wide range of scientific topics, contents and journals.
• Clarivate Analytics Database: This database is also known as Web of Science (WOS) which is the gold-standard for the academic research quality and innovative work. It requires a special access to see the data for researcher, however, it provides a great outlook for the research quality and journal quality.
• SciVal Database: Similar to both WOS and Scopus, this database focus on more detailed analysis for the results and helps to make a fair comparison among researchers, it has many parameters to be sorted, analyzed and therefore the impact of the researcher can be measured with this database with accurate and detailed manner.
• Publons Database: Is a young metric provided by Clarivate analytics, it focuses of peer review activities and journal editorials. It takes the advantage of partnership with the high impact publishers of the scientific contents. Therefore, it raised to the tops in a very short period. The peer review data and editorials are verified by Publons and shows badges for highly-cited researchers, academy graduate and/or mentor, excellent reviewer and top reviewer in the field.
• Google Scholar Database: The easiest and the most traditional way for measuring scientific output due to its connection with Google the web master.
• Researchgate Database: This database is easily accessible and allow for more than papers to be discussed and published in the website, therefore, it is more like a scientific network for communication and collaboration and published draft and white papers.

The status of the researcher was established by considering several academic network websites including Web of Science, Scopus, Sci-Val, ResearchGate, Publons, and Google Scholar. The classification of the researcher was weighted based on scientific contribution to multiple criteria for every index. For instance, Sci-Val academic index presented several scientific criteria such Academic /Field-Weighted Citation Impact, Publications in Top Journal Percentiles, Most cited publications, Field-Weighted Views Impact and international collaboration / Field-Weighted Citation Impact. Hence, the ranking scheme was developed in the manner where an appropriate weight was assigned for every sub criterion of those academic indices. Worth to mention, this is an evaluation per year research output.

Based on the selection criteria; the award committee decided after deep and long discussions to set the following Al-Ayen Award criteria

1-Scopus based database with a total weight of 25% divided as follows:

• Overall Citations, with a weight of 4%.
• H-index, with a weight of 5%.
• Number of papers published in 2021, with a weight of 10%.
• Total number of documents, with a weight of 6%.

2- SciVal based database with a total weight of 20% divided as follows:

• Academic /Field-Weighted Citation Impact, with a weight of 3%.
• Publications in Top Journal Percentiles, with a weight of 4%.
• Citation Count, with a weight of 3%.
• Field-Weighted Views Impact, with a weight of 4%.
• International collaboration, with a weight of 3%.
• Field-Weighted Citation Impact, with a weight of 3%.

3- Web of Science based database with a total weight of 30% divided as follows:

• Overall Citations, with a weight of 3%.
• H-index, with a weight of 5%.
• Number of papers published in 2021, with a weight of 9%.
• Number of citations in 2021, with a weight of 3%.
• Total number of documents, with a weight of 5%.
• Individual publications in 2021, with a weight of 5%.

4- Publons based database with a total weight of 8% divided as follows:

• Top reviewer award, with a weight of 2%.
• Total number of editorial contributions, with a weight of 2%.
• Total number of reviews contributions, with a weight of 2%.
• Highly-cited award, with a weight of 2%.

5- Google Scholar based database with a total weight of 12% divided as follows:

• Total number of documents, with a weight of 4%.
• Number of papers published in 2021, with a weight of 3%.
• H-index, with a weight of 2%.
• Overall Citations, with a weight of 3%.

5-Researchgate based database with a total weight of 8% for the researchgate score.

• Note: Some researchers might be not well recognized or fairly evaluated, and this is owing to the fact, not all Iraqi researchers having all those academic network websites. Hence, we are emphasizing all scholars to register with all those academic network websites. This is essential for multiple purposes such as promoting their research and novel ideas, reach out with more global academic network, explore or develop new ideas based on the existed innovations, and finally gives the opportunity to evaluate more accurately in the future ranking versions.

On Tuesday, March 1, 2022, Al-Ayen University held a ceremony for its Iraqi academic researcher award at the conference hall, in presence of many scholars from all over the country.

 The ceremony was inaugurated by recitation of verses of Holy Quran followed by the Iraqi National Anthem, then by recitation of Fatiha Chapter to bless the souls of Iraqi martyrs, before playing the University Anthem. later on a speech was delivered by the Chancellor of the University Prof. Dr. Shafik Al-Mowla,in which he stated "it is necessary to praise and commemorate the scientists who are the development foundation of any developed country or nation. He highlighted the great role of our beloved researchers who won the prizes of Al-Ayen Award who proved their great capabilities in making the scientific researches besides the enormous production specially during the past two years. We believe that there are some important comments that need to be seriously addressed".

Then two speeches were delivered by Vice-Chancellor for Scientific Affairs Asst. Prof. Dr. Haider Marhoon and Vice-Chancellor for Administrative Affairs Asst. Prof. Dr. Atheer Oudah

 The ceremony came in coincident with the Teacher day, the University honored a group of Iraqi academics who were able to meet the scientific committee terms. i.e. having the researcher current workplace at an Iraqi Institution exclusively, publishing their researches and contributions under the name of this institution, number of their published researches during the award year is no less than 12 researches, the H-Index is no less than 12 in Scopus and no less than 6 in Clarvet  indexes