UP professor named top Philippines scientist by Spanish firm

MANILA, Philippines - A clinical associate professor at the University of the Philippines College of Medicine was named the top scientist in the country based on a list published by a Spanish research firm.

The Spanish National Research Council recently released the Cybermetrics Lab ranking of scientists working in Philippine institutions based on their public profiles in Google Scholar, a web search engine that indexes scholarly literature online.

Janus Ong, a transplant hepatologist who also works as a consultant for the Philippine General Hospital, dominated the list that included 116 scientists affiliated with UP.

The ranking measured the number of publications and citations of scientists who have existing Google Scholar accounts.

“This edition was built with data collected during the third week of November 2015 from the public profiles of researchers working in Philippine (Southeast Asia) institutions,” read the introduction of the list.

“It is a BETA Ranking of the scientists according to their declared (voluntarily) presence in the Google Scholar Citations database. We advise those interested in appearing in future editions to sign into these databases, correcting and updating their public profiles,” it added.

Also included in the top five are Maricar Prudente (De La Salle University), Charles Yuji Horioka (UP; Asian Growth Research Institute, Osaka University), Gregory Tangonan (Ateneo de Manila University) and Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan (UP).

Following the release of the rankings, UP vice president for academic affairs Gisela Concepcion issued a memorandum encouraging faculty members to register and create their respective Google Scholar profiles.

Concepcion, who is tenth in the ranking, said this would ensure that the current list of UP scientists with citations is updated and corrected in future editions of the Cybermetrics Lab ranking.

UP said it will soon generate its own listing of Filipino scientists to include UP scientists who have recently registered with Google Scholar.