PolyU tops the world in the field of construction and building technology

Jan. 22, 2014 - PRLog -- According to a research paper in the current issue of Construction and Building Materials, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) tops the world in the publication of articles related to field of construction and building technology.

A team of researchers from the Polytechnic University of Madrid in Spain has published a paper titled "Bibliometric analysis in the international context of the 'Construction and Building Technology' category from the Web of Science database” in Construction and Building Materials. Their study established a ranking of leading countries and research centres in that field which covers the primary research areas of PolyU’s Faculty of Construction and Environment (FCE).

As the paper pointed out, among the more than 12,800 institutions and research institutions that have conducted research in the areas of construction and building technology, PolyU leads institutional production with 587 weighted articles (1.5%) between 1997 and 2011.  PolyU rose from the fourth position in the 1997/1999 period to the top position in the 2000/2002 period; and remains in the top position on a roll in the 2003/2005, 2006/2008, and 2009/2011 periods (the latest period studied) respectively.

The top five productive research centres between 1997 and 2011, in descending order, are:

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (587 weighted articles)

National University of Singapore (328 weighted articles)

University of California at Berkeley (286 weighted articles)

Purdue University (257 weighted articles)

Tongji University (257 weighted articles)

Professor Albert Chan, Interim Dean of FCE, was very pleased with the Faculty’s advancement in the world ranking.He said, “It is an impressive testament to the efforts of our colleagues. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the academic staff who have contributed to our leading position.”

FCE has a record of sustained success in securing competitive funding from the General Research Fund (formerly the Competitive Earmarked Research Grants or CERG) of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and publications that make an impact on the scientific community. In the category of "Civil Engineering, Surveying, Building and Construction", PolyU has remained in the lead for nineteen consecutive years since 1994/95.

In terms of quality and impact of research publications in civil engineering (broadly defined to include Construction and Building Ethnology, Environmental Engineering, Geological Engineering, Ocean Engineering, Transportation Science and Technology), PolyU was ranked number five in the world by the Taiwan Ranking (http://taiwanranking.lis.ntu.edu.tw/DataPage/TOP300.aspx?...) in 2012. The latest QS Subject Rankings (http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/univer...) have also rated PolyU as the sixteenth best institution in the world to study the discipline of Civil Engineering, and the first in the world in terms of the two objective research performance indicators – citations per paper and the H-index which measures the scientific productivity of its researchers and the apparent scientific impact of its research.

The weighted number of articles is “based on the number of research institutions/countries that participated in the creation of the article, assigning a fraction to each of the corresponding entities” (Canas-Guerrero et al, 2014, p.15).