UNSA disqualified due to manipulated profiles of some professors on Google Scholar

SARAJEVO, (Patria) – After the international portal Webometrics, which ranks universities, announced that the University of Sarajevo ranked 2,627th, a reaction came from the Vice-Rector for Quality at UNSA, Maida Čohodar Husić. She stated for the Patria News Agency that the University of Sarajevo has not experienced a drop in the rankings, but rather, according to one criterion used by Webometrics for ranking universities, UNSA has been disqualified, meaning it was placed last. Thus, in the final tally, it ranked 2,627th.

Čohodar-Husić explains that two days ago they were ranked 1,722nd, and the criterion used was the scientific works of UNSA professors from 2013 to 2017, where significant progress was made. However, the situation is different today because Webometrics found issues with professors' Google Scholar profiles, specifically the citations of certain scientific works whose authors are not professors at the University of Sarajevo, but are listed on their profiles.

Vice-Rector Čohodar-Husić emphasized that on July 12th of this year, she sent a letter to all organizational units requesting steps to verify the accuracy of the Google Scholar profiles of academic staff. The letter clearly stated that authors on GS profiles should check if they are listed as authors in published works.

“When GS profiles are automatically generated, it is not uncommon for works whose author is not the person for whom the profile was generated to be included. According to the instructions on the Webometrics website: ‘Institutions should monitor their members’ profiles for intentional (or unintentional) false, inaccurate, or duplicate entries. This is crucial for rankings, as any institution with this problem may be excluded from future ranking editions,’” the letter sent to UNSA organizational units stated.

Information on the verification of GS profiles was supposed to be submitted to UNSA by July 19th, but the deans and academic staff ignored the Vice-Rector’s letter.

The Vice-Rector states that it is important to emphasize that this is not a decline in quality and that they will continue communication with Webometrics to resolve the current situation. In the response sent by Webometrics to the University of Sarajevo, the reason for disqualification was stated as “three foreign professors and three highly manipulated profiles” on Google Scholar.

Three foreign professors teaching at the Faculty of Dentistry in Sarajevo created GS profiles where they listed their scientific works with a high number of citations. However, these were problematic for Webometrics because they involved foreign professors, even though they were the actual authors of the cited works. They will deactivate their profiles.

The second problem concerns the GS profiles of several UNSA professors, particularly a few from the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Health Studies, where works cited more than 3,000 times are listed, and they are not authors at all.

Such is the case with Mirza Dilić, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Sarajevo, whose profile lists texts cited 3,137 times, even though he is not one of the authors.

GS profile of Mirza Dilić, listing someone else’s scientific work

Aida Pilav’s profile from the Faculty of Health Studies contains a published work cited 1,740 times, but she is not the author of that work.

The same applies to the Google Scholar profile of Semir Bešlija, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Sarajevo and head of Oncology at KCUS, where a work cited 1,182 times is listed. Semir Bešlija’s name is not among the authors of that work.

The Rector of the University of Sarajevo, Rifat Škrijelj, told the Patria News Agency that it cannot be spoken of as a decline, but rather as a penalty that the University of Sarajevo found itself in due to a few irresponsible individuals.

“We will contact Webometrics, we will ask these professors to update their profiles, and I hope that by doing so, we will be ranked according to all criteria without disqualification,” said Rector Škrijelj.