The Alper-Doger Scientific Index for scientific performance evaluation featured two Moroccan women scientists on its 2023 list. Questions on the reliability of the ranking have been raised on social media this year, where many say it is a “predatory ranking” with a financial incentive.
Rajaa Cherkaoui El Moursili and Farida Fassi both teach at the Mohammed V University of Rabat and made it to the AD index list through ‘their generous contribution to the Moroccan and international science scene.’
The list ranks scientists based on their performance and the added value of their scientific productivity, based on three sub-classification criteria, which are the “H” index, the “i10” index, and the number of citations and general referrals in scientifically and research-reviewed articles.
A very important condition is paying $30 USD for an individual researcher to be included in the ranking, said Retraction Watch, a blog that reports on retractions of scientific papers and on related topics. The sum for institutions is unspecified.
El Moursili ranked 152 worldwide and Fassi 160 in a total of 1.087 scientists on the AD list.
“This is clearly a money-making scheme,” declared Kyle Siler to Retraction watch.
The meta-science researcher at the University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada has previously written about predatory publishing.
He said that “This is a new innovation in predation.”
Saleh Naqib, a physicist at the University of Rajshahi in Bangladesh told Retraction Watch that whenever such rankings are published, some researchers tend to make a big deal out of them, from news reports to extensive promotions on social media, which seems to be the case with this recent ranking: local media have been praising the two Moroccan scientists’ “achievements” following the ranking’s release.
‘Pretadory publishing’ translates into ranking publishers taking publication fees as opposed to standard reliable rankings.
El Moursili did not hide her great happiness with her ranking calling it an achievement, which awards a long path of research, work, and innovation within the framework of international partnerships for research and university cooperation, reported Hespress AR.
She considered her ranking as “an honor for Morocco and the efforts of researchers and their competencies,” explaining that it is like scientific diplomacy that ensures a wide radiance of Morocco in international academic forums.
El Moursili’s specialties are natural science, physics, nuclear physics, medical physics, and high energy physics.
AD Scientific explained on the website that it relies on Google Scholar data in its ranking methodology, and bases its ranking on nine undisclosed parameters that remain unclear besides the three stated above.
Google Scholar was developed as a tool for providing a rapid method for conducting a thorough search for scholarly articles; it is not, on its own, an accurate ranking system.
Even though it is an academic search engine, the lack of sufficient assessment of the work featured in it makes it an unreliable academic source.
Rajaa El Moursili won the L’Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science for her work on the Higgs Boson for Africa and the Arab states in 2015.
She was awarded for her contribution to the discovery of the Higgs Boson, the particle responsible for the creation of mass.
The scientist was inspired by Neil Armstrong’s achievements to pursue her studies.
She obtained her doctorate in physics in France and then later set up the first Moroccan master’s degree in medical physics.
Farida Fassi specializes in Fundamental research in High Energy Physics (HEP) and quantitative analysis with advanced statistical tools.
She has a long track record in research in high-energy physics,
experimental physics, and device development for elementary-particle physics
She is currently a professor at Mohammed V University in Rabat. She started working in ATLAS in 1996, one of the largest collaborative assemblies attempted in science.
She studied for her Ph.D. at IFIC in Valencia, Spain.
She worked in the online and offline teams of data analysis of the first prototypes of the Hadronic Tile Calorimeter modules. The results were a great addition to physics analysis.
Fassi said that she is “very proud of raising the Moroccan flag in this prestigious classification in general, and in the field of physics in particular.”
In a statement to Hespress AR, she said that this ranking is the result of years of long struggles and research.
She takes great pride in being in a team of scientists who contributed to the most prominent discoveries of the 21st century related to molecules.
In 2003, she began working in Grid Computing and Distributed Data Analysis, then she had a CNRS post-doctoral research fellowship working on the CMS experiment while based in Lyon, France.
The scientist took part in operating the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG); which is a worldwide collaborative effort on an unprecedented scale in terms of storage and CPU requirements, as well as the software project’s size developed to solve the problem of data storage and analysis of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN University.
According to AD’s website, the ranking’s classification was based on the experts’ recent work, using Google Scholar and its enigmatic indexes.
It is rather informative but does not adhere to a common reliable ranking system.
The two scientists have indeed contributed to the development of the international and national scientific field, which is why despite the controversy around the ranking’s legitimacy, their work should be celebrated.
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