2023 NRF Rating Call: Briefing Session

The Department of Research and Innovation in partnership with the Department of Library Services hosted a hybrid workshop titled 2023 NRF rating call: briefing session on the 18^th of November 2022. The Health Sciences Faculty through the leadership of Professor Tivani Mashamba-Thompson, Deputy Dean: Research, offered up a venue at the Basic Medical Sciences building on the Prinshof campus for the in-person briefing session. The online attendees were accommodated on Blackboard Collaborate.

The workshop aimed to provide strategic advice on how researchers can maximise their chances of firstly, getting an NRF rating, and secondly, obtaining a higher rather than a lower rating from the NRF. Over 90 attendees (both virtual and physical) attended the 2023 NRF rating session. The first part of the session was facilitated by Professor Thaddeus Metz, an NRF A-rated researcher from the Faculty of Humanities presenting on the NRF application form and how to complete the relevant sections. He has in the past, reviewed several NRF rating applications in philosophy, ethics, African studies, and education in addition to being part of the internal rating committee at UP.

The second part of the session was presented by Mrs Sunette Steynberg, who presented information provided by the Department of Library Services to improve the success rate of the NRF rating applications.

Professor Metz presented on the following major topics: whether researchers should apply, what the NRF wants to see in the application, how the NRF arrives at a rating, and how to compose an application. Some of the reasons he stated for applying for a rating include:

• benchmarking,
• reflecting on the nature or direction of your research,
• incentive funding from the NRF for research,
• improved chances of receiving other support from the NRF,
• it is useful for hiring/promotions
• it is useful for institutional recognition and opportunities

In terms of what the NRF wants, the following were noted: mastery of a niche area based on publications in the past 8 years, consistent publishing, coherence among research outputs, and the extent to which you can claim ownership of a specific research field.

Speaking of research outputs, the presentation by Sunette touched on the bibliometric and altmetric support that the library provides to researchers for their applications for ratings to the NRF. The template that Information Specialists use to present the data to researchers was presented to the attendees. The library uses data from Clarivate’s Web of Science, Scopus, Scival, and Google Scholar for the bibliometric data. The article-level altmetric data can be found through PlumX analytics which is available on Scopus. The template gets revised when there are significant changes or additional information that needs to be presented to the researcher.

The following aspects form part of the report: the name and surname of the researcher, their ORCID, number of publications, citations, and H-index over the 8-year period. The all-time H-index is also included. SciVal data that is used includes field-weighted citation impact, field-weighted view impact, percentage of publications by subject area, international co-authorship, percentage of publications in the top 10% most cited, and the percentage of publications in the top 10% highest impact journals by CiteScore. Each of the 5 articles that the researcher selects will have additional analysis including the number of citations from both Journal citation reports (Clarivate) and Scopus, the impact factor from Web of Science, and/or CiteScore from Scopus. The same 5 articles will have the usage, captures, and social media engagement reflected if it is available.

All researchers who want to apply for an NRF rating will need to provide their department’s Information Specialist with an updated CV, 5 outputs that are in the niche area they want to apply for, and they must also have an ORCID and Google Scholar profile. It is also advisable that researchers get in touch with their faculty research office when they intend to apply for an NRF rating to ensure that they meet all the requirements for their intended application and support as well. The Department of Research and Innovation has a link to the NRF and can assist with questions regarding the application process that researchers may have.

Information Specialists’ contact information can be found here

Research Support services information from the Department of Research and Innovation can be found here