A story of two lists: Who is who when it comes to research in Pakistani Business School

Dr. Muhammad Mohsin Butt
Air University, Islamabad, Pakistan

(Transcript of Facebook video with minor edits)

Here is an overview of top researchers in business faculty in Pakistan which is based on my study with the help of my research associate, Muhammad Alam. We collected data, comprising both objective and subjective measures, and accordingly compiled a list which is based on a survey of Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission (HEC) list of top 15 business schools and certain other schools. In the future, we wish to expand the list to include researchers at other business schools and also develop a discipline-specific list.

For this research, we used multiple variables such as total number of publications, publications in Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), total impact factor, total number of publications in Scopus, total Cite Score by Scopus, g-Index, h-index and total Google Scholar citations. One challenge that we faced was to identify which variable to be used as a reference variable for these rankings. We used SSCI in this research.

Based on our objective criteria, we found out that among the top researchers, the number one researcher in Pakistan today is Professor Jawad Syed from LUMS. He has 32 publications in SSCI out of a total of 126 publications. His total impact factor is 54.30. He has 55 publications in Scopus index, total Cite Score in Scopus is 77, h-index 21, g-index 39 and Google citations 1584.

Second on our list is Dr Syed Ali Raza. He deals with research in the area of Economics and is currently working as a Professor in Iqra University, Karachi. He has total 19 publications in SSCI out of a total of 47. He has 39 publications in Scopus index, and his total cite score is 56.49. H-index 14, G-index 21 and Google citations 517.

The third on the list is Dr Arif Nazir Butt of LUMS. He has 13 publications in SCCI out of total 26 publications. His total impact factor is 28.77. He has 20 publications in Scopus, 29.93 is his total cite score, h-index 9, g-index 23 and Google citations 531.

The fourth on the list is Dr Muhammad Mohsin Butt, currently working as a professor of marketing at Air University. With 11 SSCI publications out of a total of 30 publications, total impact factor 11.25, 28 publications in Scopus, and total cite score 41.05. H-index 12, G-index 26 and Google citation 786.

The fifth one on this list is Shahzad Kausar, working as Assistant Professor at COMSATS Islamabad. The sixth one on the list is Dr Farhad Zulfiqar, Assistant Professor of Management Sciences at COMSATS Islamabad. On the seventh position we have Muhammad Kashif from GIFT University Islamabad. Eighth person on the list is Dr. Rizwana Kausar from UCP, Lahore. The ninth on the list is Khalid Ahmed from IBA. On the tenth position, we have Abbas. On the eleventh position, we have Dr. Saad Azmat from LUMS. with SSCI index of 7, 11.12 impact factor in Scopus, 126 Citations and H-index 6. On the twelfth position we have Dr. Yasir, Professor of Supply Chain in COMSATS Islamabad. On the thirteenth position we have Jawaid Ghani a Professor at KSBL, Karachi. He has 6 publications in SCCI, with an impact factor of 16.09, with 13 in Scopus, his total cite score is 24, H-index 10, G index is 21, and the highest Google citations in Pakistan, i.e., 1823. On the fourteenth position, we have Syed Aun Rizvi from LUMS, who has 6 publications, with the impact factor 9.46. In Scopus, he has a score of 15, while total cite score of 21.86. On the fifteenth position, we have Dr. Amna Yousaf from COMSATS Islamabad with 6 publications in SSCI, 9. 30 impact factor, total cite score 13.126.

The above analysis is based on our objective criteria.

However, for the subjective criteria, we used weighted index of researcher’s publication in ABS list or ABDC list.

We used the ABS list ranking systems including four star, three star, two star, and one star publications. We used the ABDC list which is based on A-star, A, B, C, and D classification. We gave weights like 1.80, 0.60, 0.40 and 0.20 for ABS list while for ABDC, we gave 1.00, 0.75, 0.50.and 0.25. Drawing on this analysis, we have another list based on the subjective criteria.

We have five researchers in the objective criteria who are not there in the subjective criteria. The idea is to help individuals understand and use multiple criteria to identify the research talent in Pakistan and not to discriminate against any researchers’ work and publications.

Based on the ABS and ABDC weighted indices, the top three researchers are Dr. Jawad Syed with weighted index of 18, Syed Ali Raza with the weighted index of 6.60, Dr Muhammad Mohsin Butt with weighted index of 5.80. We can see there is a huge drop from Dr. Jawad Syed to the next person. So we need to look at the weighted index of next person rather than making Dr. Jawad Syed as the reference point.

Kashif from GIFT University has a weighted index of 5.40, Dr Saad Azmat from LUMS has a weighted index of 5.40, Dr Aun Rizvi from LUMS has a weighted index of 4.60, Dr Arif Nazir Butt has a weighted index of 4.40. Professor Irfan Butt at Lake Head University Canada has a weighted index of 3.40 is on the subjective list while he was not on the objective list. Professor Amna Yousaf has a weighted index of 3.30 while Muhammad Abbas with the weighted index of 2.80, Professor Jawaid Ghani at KSBL has a weighted index of 2.80. Dr Sadia Nadeem is in the subjective list though she was not there in the objective list. She has a weighted index of 2.80. Arif Butt, Irfan Butt and Sadia Nadeem have at least two publications in ABS-4 list and they are amongst top researchers. The next person on the list is professor Abid Imran Barki, an economist with a weighted index of 2.60. Dr. Mustafa Raziq has a weighted index of 2.60. Then Dr. Ataullah Shah from IM Sciences Peshawar has a weighted index of 2.60.

Thus, if we combine both lists, we will have around 20 individuals who are top researchers in Pakistan’s business schools. This is just a preliminary study at this point in time. In the future, we need to expand this pool to identify good researchers to integrate the business education community and use them as mentors to help other researchers in the country.