Affiliation on UG/UMCG academic outputs

Guidelines for research and academic staff

In 2007, the Board of the University of Groningen adopted a regulation prescribing how the correct UG affiliation name must be mentioned in academic outputs.

Staff at the UG/UMCG who are authors or co-authors of a publication that has been produced (in whole or in part) or based on results achieved during the period of their employment at the University of Groningen (UG), are obliged to include in their affiliation the following literal institution name:

In English-language or other non-Dutch-language media

‘University of Groningen’ or, in the case of the University Medical Center Groningen: ‘University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen’.

In Dutch-language media

‘Rijksuniversiteit Groningen’ or, in the case of the University Medical Center Groningen: ‘Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen’.

The name of the faculty and/or research institute may be added, depending on the prescriptions of the Faculty Board/director of the institute.

Why is this important?

A key reason to adopt the regulation on correct UG affiliation in research outputs is to ensure optimum findability of UG/UMCG outputs in databases such as WoS used to produce various university rankings such as the QS (World University Ranking), THE-WUR and the Shanghai’s ARWU. Although the ranking methodologies are disputable, their impact on international reputation continues to grow. Our UG Strategy Plan 2021-2026 aims at maintaining a Top-100 position.

An analysis in 2005 revealed over 150 name variants found on UG publications, a significant part of which mentioned an institute or department name only, without the full UG name. After unification of all these name variants, our total publication count increased by 13%, our citation count by 16% and our citations per paper ratio by 3%. At that time, the UG was not in the global Top-200 of QS. Partly due to our improved findability, our position has rapidly improved since and UG has been in the global Top-100 of what is known now as THE-WUR.

In addition, with the growing volume of academic outputs, the importance of a correct main affiliation on (all) outputs is also essential to ensure that they are recorded and visible in our own Research portal. We automatically pull publications from large databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. If the affiliation is wrong on your publications, they will be missed and not imported to our UG research database (Pure). It is this database that we use:

1. as a source for the public research portal of the university (important for increasing the visibility of your work)
2. as a source for internal evaluations and promotions.

Moreover, your own findability and visibility in public databases such as WoS, Scopus or Google Scholar, often depends not only on consistent use of your own name (and preferably an ORCID), but also that of your main affiliation. Authors with common names, often can only be told apart by linking to the affiliation.

Contacts

For any questions regarding affiliations on research output, please contact Dr. Jules van Rooij, senior policy officer at the Research & Funding department (j.m.van.rooij rug.nl), or Mrs. Doetsje Brouwer, Pure team leader at the University Library (d.brouwer rug.nl).