According to the criteria of international university ranking organizations:
Overall Recommendations
 Many Japanese universities are punching below their weight due to a lack of citations (MEXT, 2013)
and rich content including English on their Website, so be a faculty hero by helping optimize academic
accomplishments for fuller recognition.
 Universities hurt their rankings by high teacher turnover and part-time hiring. Ranking organizations
advise that all staff need to contribute to the measured output (i.e., Web presence). A mutual
commitment is therefore needed between the university and its teachers as stakeholders. Universities
should also encourage part-time and retired teachers to use the campus domain, and the university’s
name in their publications, because it is all counted.
 Universities should also realize that their reputation and attractiveness to foreign students are
affected by international ranking organizations abroad.
 Have an open source online campus research repository, and try to get permission for as many outside
publications as possible to be republished in it.
 Have all affiliated scholars who publish maintain a Google Scholar Profile.
 Optimize as well as maximize Web presence according to evaluation criteria of university ranking
organizations, and align formats of academic articles with Google Scholar and other online algorithms
by which that output is measured.
 Have all campus Website pages interlinked, and encourage links from other domains by providing
faculty homepages and useful community services. Show abundance and openness rather than
controlled scarcity and exclusiveness.
Campus Website and Publishing Recommendations
 The more content, the better, but it should be on the open Web, not password-protected, in order to
be spidered by search engines, and in the main campus domain, e.g.,
www.xyz.ac.jp/subdomain/article.pdf
 Since more academic content and links to the site are rated better, have versions in English and other
languages. Interlink all Web content.
 Standardize the exact spelling of the university’s name in all languages used, and the spelling of the
names of authors affiliated with the university. Algorithms usually match full names with a comma and
initial after one’s surname, but always publish under the exact same name, as algorithms may miss
variations and misspellings.
 In published articles on the campus server, write the university’s name in the line below the title and
author’s name, all in full and exact spellings, and in two or more languages including English. A bilingual
abstract and keywords may also attract more recognition and links.
 The preferred file format for online publications is PDF. Also save presentations in PDF format for the
campus site or research repository.
How to set up and customize your Google Scholar Profile
Start at http://scholar.google.com or http://scholar.google.co.jp (日本語で)
Click on Sign in, log into your Google account if necessary, and apply to set up a Google Scholar Profile using
your main academic e-mail address, such as User_ID@xyz.ac.jp
Check your e-mail at that account to click on a link and activate your Profile. When prompted, provide your
photo, specializations, and homepage URL. The latter become links. Co-authors who also have Google Scholar
profiles can be invited to mutually link. Over time, check what publications of yours that Google Scholar lists
automatically, through its spidering or data from research repositories.
To customize, click on links or choose among “Actions” from the drop-down menu. “Delete” any items that are
not your publications. Algorithms make mistakes, such as with common names. “Merge” any separate items
that are actually the same publication. “Add” and click again on “Add article manually” to add publications
that Google Scholar did not find among its selected sources. The types of publications that can be added are
books, theses, book chapters, papers in journals or in conference proceedings, and other (articles in
periodicals, etc.). If you provide the year and month, or even the day of publications, Google Scholar
automatically places them in (reverse) chronological order. Click on “Year” to see the newest items first. Your
Profile, which is indexed with a high weight in Google search results, can thus serve as an online list of
publications, updated automatically and manually throughout your career.
Steve McCarty’s bilingual Website of publications: http://www.waoe.org/steve/epublist.html