Dr. Yijia Lin, N. Z. Snell Life Insurance Professor, contemplated how to raise the awareness of research excellence in actuarial science for years. By bringing together a team of faculty, staff, students and business partners, she led the creation of the first web application to compile, rank and publish global research rankings for actuarial science, risk management and insurance.
Hosted on the College of Business website, the application provides rankings for the top 20 North American and the top 50 worldwide business and non-business schools according to the cumulative number of their respective faculties’ publications in specific journals. It also provides information on rankings by journal, per capita rankings, publications by university, publications by author and collaboration among universities or authors.
Members of the project team from left to right: James Fairchild, Sue Vagts, Tzong Her Lee, Yijia Lin and Zheng Nian Yop.
“For years, there have been research rankings available online in marketing, management, accounting and finance, but we never had those before in actuarial science and risk management,” Lin said.
Ameritas partnered with the college to provide development funds to make the vision a reality.
Four actuarial science students help with development on an on-going basis. The students compile data from new journals to update the tool and answer any user questions.
“Making the data consistent was our biggest challenge. There are different ways people present their names in different journals and we have to identify the same person accurately for each article, which maintains our reputation and that of the application,” said Lin.
With actuarial science programs located in and out of the U.S. and some part of non-business areas, the application needed to work around the differences in programs and research. Utilized by academics throughout the world, the UNL Global Research Rankings of Actuarial Science and Risk Management & Insurance launched in 2019. Within the first month of releasing it, schools from China, Australia and Canada cited the rankings.
By ranking the highest level of research conducted, the application will continue to raise the bar actuarial science, risk management and insurance research.