VIRTUAL TOUR
2020
25 FebProfessor Ooi’s Paper is Top 1% in Academic Field of Social Science
UCSI’s Faculty of Business and Information Science dean Professor Ooi Keng Boon has received two new recognitions for his continuing hard work and dedication in research, particularly on the topic of mobile credit cards.
The first recognition was by Clarivate Analytics which placed his paper ‘NFC Mobile Credit Card: The Next Frontier of Mobile Payment?’ in the top 1% of the academic field of social science. The second was for the same article which was recognised as a Highly Cited Article Paper by the journal Telematics and Informatics, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 292-307 (Elsevier, SSCI, JCR-2018, IF = 3.714, Q1-ranked journal). The article was co-authored with Dr Garry Wei-Han Tan, Dr Siong-Choy Chong and Dr Teck-Soon Hew.
Adding to his list of accolades, these two recognitions further cement his ardent pursuit of high impact research, contributing to his position as dean and to the Faculty itself. It takes a person of a certain calibre to obtain recognitions such as these but to Professor Ooi, it is all about being bold and persistent.
“Investigating a novel topic that is unfamiliar to the readers right now requires a bold attitude as the outcomes of research are not guaranteed and hence the findings might be difficult to publish. That being said, rejections might happen. This is the time where persistence comes in. Sometimes, a paper might get rejected several times before it finally gets accepted, and being persistent is the only thing an academician can do throughout the publication process,” said Professor Ooi.
So what is a good research paper?
According to Professor Ooi, a good research paper that would receive a lot of citations should present a novel topic that might be unfamiliar to the readers right now. For instance, the use of smartphones to pay for food in a night market might be impractical ten years ago, but this is what the government is pushing for as of this moment.
Hence, Professor Ooi remarked that a paper on the use of smartphone mobile payment might be novel ten years ago, but less so now as researchers are now all investigating on this topic. A “crowded” topic is definitely hard to attract citations and they are diluted by the number of papers published.
“This recognition marks the first time, that my paper is listed as the top 1% of papers by field and publication year based on the number of citations received in September/October 2019. Most importantly, the letter of recognition is issued by the Web of Science group, a Clarivate Analytics company that maintains the renowned Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)”, he said.
As for his inspiration, it is derived from different sources, for instance, reading and observation. Every day, he reads current trending issues that are happening in the business world, and tries to link them to the phenomenon observed to see if this could be a new research idea.
To date Professor Ooi has been credited with more than 9,900 citations in top-ranked journals with a Google Scholar Citations score of 58 (Scopus H-index = 41; Thomson ISI-Web of Science H-Index = 36). Additionally, he has co-authored over 100 papers in international refereed journals.
As for the award by Telematics and Informatics, Professor Ooi elaborates that “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. I believe that there are only a few, a precious few, who find something they have to accomplish in their lives. Something that will continuously drive them forward if they cannot achieve it. I am lucky to have found something that I must do, something that pushes me forward always.”
This recognition stands out from the other recognitions Professor Ooi has received as it is only given to the highly cited papers of all time in the Telematics and Informatics journal (Elsevier). In total, there are only seven papers published in the Telematics and Informatics journal listed as Highly Cited Articles (https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/telematics-and-informatics). Thus far, Professor Ooi’s paper has received 126 Scopus citations ever since its publication.
“Citation impacts are one of the significant performance indicators when it comes to university rankings. For example, in the QS World University Rankings, one of the important indicators, namely “Citations per Faculty from Scopus”, alone accounts for 20% of the overall rankings score a university can obtain. Since this particular recognition indicates the high amount of citations received, I believe UCSI can achieve a higher ranking in the future,” he said.
Professor Ooi advises other academics wanting to succeed in research to always research on a novel topic, even if the topic is still emerging and unfamiliar to the readers.
“NFC mobile credit card was a relatively novel mobile payment method a few years ago, and honestly, we were quite worried if the paper could be well accepted by the readers when it was published. It turns out that the readers, especially the researchers from the same field of research, loved it and subsequently cited it in their work,” he said.
Professor Ooi recent achievements have helped him make a mark in his fields of expertise, particularly in Information Systems and Mobile Technology. Nevertheless, Professor Ooi continues to be committed and perseverant in contributing to UCSI University by pushing it to greater heights in terms of research.
Below is a list of articles on Professor Ooi’s recent awards and recognitions:
https://www.ucsiuniversity.edu.my/professor-ooi-wins-two-awards-top-downloaded-article
https://www.ucsiuniversity.edu.my/professor-ooi-receives-certificate-most-cited-paper
https://www.ucsiuniversity.edu.my/prof-ooi-receives-prestigious-mrsa
https://www.ucsiuniversity.edu.my/professor-ooi-among-the-world%E2%80%99s-top-1-reviewers
https://www.ucsiuniversity.edu.my/ucsi-dean-wins-top-cited-paper-award-from-elsevier
