Publishing performance in economics: Spanish rankings (1990-1999)

This paper contributes to the growing literature that analyses the Spanish publishing performance in Economics throughout the 1990s. Several bibliometric indicators are used in order to provide Spanish rankings (of both institutions and individual authors) based on Econlit journals. Further, lists of the ten most influential authors and articles over that period, in terms of citations, are reported.Publicad

Measuring Economic Journals' Citation Efficiency: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

This paper by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and statistical inference evaluates the citation performance of 229 economic journals. The paper categorizes the journals into four main categories (A to D) based on their efficiency levels. The results are then compared to the 27 “core economic journals” as introduced by Dimond (1989). The results reveal that after more than twenty years Diamonds’ list of “core economic journals” is still valid. Finally, for the first time the paper uses data from four well-known databases (SSCI, Scopus, RePEc, Econlit) and two quality ranking reports (Kiel Institute internals ranking and ABS quality ranking report) in a DEA setting and in order to derive the ranking of 229 economic journals. The ten economic journals with the highest citation performance are Journal of Political Economy, Econometrica, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Finance, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.Ranking journals; Data Envelopment Analysis; Indexing techniques; Nonparametric analysis.

Student graduation: to what extent does university expenditure matter?

Human capital is one of the most important channels via which universities positively affect regional development. This paper analyzes the relationship between university characteristics and graduation rates, and the role of regional characteristics in this process. We assemble a dataset for the entire public university system in Spain over the last decade. Observing the same university over several years helps us address the problem of unobserved heterogeneity. The main findings that can be drawn from our results are that university features, such as expenditure, student-teacher ratio and financial-aid to students are important in accounting for graduation rates. Likewise, regional characteristics such as labour market conditions appear to matter when generating graduate students.Universities, graduation, human capital, regional economy

Research assessment in the humanities: problems and challenges

Research assessment is going to play a new role in the governance of universities and research institutions. Evaluation of results is evolving from a simple tool for resource allocation towards policy design. In this respect "measuring" implies a different approach to quantitative aspects as well as to an estimation of qualitative criteria that are difficult to define. Bibliometrics became so popular, in spite of its limits, just offering a simple solution to complex problems. The theory behind it is not so robust but available results confirm this method as a reasonable trade off between costs and benefits. Indeed there are some fields of science where quantitative indicators are very difficult to apply due to the lack of databases and data, in few words the credibility of existing information. Humanities and social sciences (HSS) need a coherent methodology to assess research outputs but current projects are not very convincing. The possibility of creating a shared ranking of journals by the value of their contents at either institutional, national or European level is not enough as it is raising the same bias as in the hard sciences and it does not solve the problem of the various types of outputs and the different, much longer time of creation and dissemination. The web (and web 2.0) represents a revolution in the communication of research results mainly in the HSS, and also their evaluation has to take into account this change. Furthermore, the increase of open access initiatives (green and gold road) offers a large quantity of transparent, verifiable data structured according to international standards that allow comparability beyond national limits and above all is independent from commercial agents. The pilot scheme carried out at the university of Milan for the Faculty of Humanities demonstrated that it is possible to build quantitative, on average more robust indicators, that could provide a proxy of research production and productiivity even in the HSS

¿Cuán eficientes son las universidades en la publicación de investigación? Un análisis envolvente de datos de las universidades públicas españolas?

The level of efficiency regarding the production of published scientific research in 2015 for the 48 state universities of the Spanish education system is assessed. It is used a methodological approach based on output specifications of desirable outputs (total amount of published papers in Q1 journals) and undesirable outputs (non-cited publications). Relative measures are obtained under two efficiency schemes, natural and managerial. Results enable to identify certain management strategies to improve overall efficiency at publishing research of the Spanish university system. A higher allocation of budget resources among certain institutions would lead to efficiency gains for the system as a whole.Se evalúa el nivel de eficiencia en la publicación de trabajos de investigación en las 48 universidades públicas del sistema español de educación superior para el año 2015. El método utilizado se caracteriza por la diferenciación entre resultados deseados (total de trabajos publicados en revistas del primer cuartil) y resultados no deseados (trabajos no citados), obteniendo una medida de eficiencia relativa a partir de dos esquemas de eficiencia: natural y de gestión. Los resultados permiten identificar estrategias para mejorar la eficiencia en la publicación de trabajos de investigación del Sistema Universitario Español en su conjunto. Un aumento de recursos financieros en determinadas universidades generaría ganancias de eficiencia para el conjunto del sistema

Communication Research, the Geopolitics of Knowledge and Publishing in High-Impact Journals: The Chronicle of a commodification process foretold

The reforms in higher education that have been introduced on a global scale in recent years have gone hand in glove with the progressive imposition of scientific journal impact factors, all of which points to the rise of academic capitalism and digital labour in universities that is increasingly subject to the logic of the market. A diachronic analysis of this process allows for talking about, paraphrasing Gabriel García Márquez, the chronicle of a commodification process foretold. More than twenty years ago it was clear what was going to happen, but not how it was going to unfold. Accordingly, this article reconstructs that process, comparing the Spanish case with global trends and highlighting the crucial role that governmental agencies like the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation and specific evaluation tools like the publication of scientific papers in high-impact journals have played in it. In this analysis, Wallerstein’s core-periphery relations and the concept of commodity fetishism, as addressed by Walter Benjamin, prove to be especially useful. The main research question posed in this article is as follows: What does the process of the commodification of communication research look like in Spain?Proyecto de investigación de la AEI “Comunicación Solidaria Digital. Análisis de los imaginarios, los discursos y las prácticas comunicativas de las ONGD en el horizonte de la Agenda 2030” PID2019-106632GB-I00 / AEI /10.13039/501100011033. IP: Víctor Manuel Marí Sáez. Universidad de Cádi

Philosophers’ appraisals of bibliometric indicators and their use in evaluation: from recognition to knee‑jerk rejection

Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. No funding was received for conducting this study.The authors would like to thank Daniel Pallarés-Domínguez for his help in the data collection process and Mark Andrews for the English translation. We would also like to thank the three main Spanish philosophy and ethics associations, Asociación Española de Ética y Filosofía Política (AEEFP), Sociedad Académica de Filosofía (SAF) and Red Española de Filosofía (REF), for their collaboration during the research process and their endorsement of the data collection report.The knowledge and stance of researchers regarding bibliometric indicators is a feld of study that has gained weight in recent decades. In this paper we address this issue for the little explored areas of philosophy and ethics, and applied to a context, in this case Spain, where bibliometric indicators are widely used in evaluation processes. The study combines data from a self-administered questionnaire completed by 201 researchers and from 14 in-depth interviews with researchers selected according to their afliation, professional category, gender and area of knowledge. The survey data suggest that researchers do not consider bibliometric indicators a preferred criterion of quality, while there is a fairly high self-perception of awareness of a number of indicators. The qualitative data points to a generalised perception of a certain rejection of the specifc use of indicators, with four main positions being observed: (1) disqualifcation of the logic of metrics, (2) scepticism about the possibility of assessing quality with quantitative methods, (3) complaints about the incorporation of methods that are considered to belong to other disciplines, and (4) criticism of the consequences that this generates in the discipline of philosophy.CRUE-CSI

Carhus Plus+: A classification of social science and humanities journals on the basis of international visibility standards

Els factors culturals, geogràfics, històrics o lingüístics són inherents en la investigació en humanitats i ciències socials, i exclusius d'aquestes àrees. La literatura científica ha mostrat repetidament que l'anàlisi de cites no té en compte la casuística específica de les revistes científiques d'aquestes disciplines. La Generalitat de Catalunya va presentar el 2008 la classificació Carhus Plus+, un sistema senzill, objectiu i reproduïble per mesurar el perfil de les revistes científiques d'aquestes àrees a escala internacional, estatal i local des d'una perspectiva europea. Aquest article descriu la metodologia desenvolupada. Carhus Plus+ classifica les revistes segons les àrees de coneixement i les agrupa segons nivells qualitatius. Les variables considerades per a la classificació són: el factor d'impacte, preferentment, o visibilitat de les revistes en les bases de dades; el format de la revista, el tipus de consell editorial i la revisió dels articles. A més, també té en compte les especificitats de les àrees d'economia, dret i catalanística.Cultural, geographical, historical, and linguistic factors are inherent to research in the humanities and social sciences, and largely exclusive to these areas. However, the scientific literature has repeatedly shown that citation analysis does not consider the peculiar features of academic journals of those disciplines. Thus, in 2008 the Autonomous Government of Catalonia presented the classification Carhus Plus+, a simple, objective, and reproducible system to measure the profile of academic journals in the humanities and social sciences at the international, state, and local levels from a European perspective. Carhus Plus+ classifies journals in areas of knowledge and groups them into qualitative levels. The variables used in the classification are: impact factor, preferably, or visibility of the journal in the databases; journal format, type of editorial board, and the article-review system. In addition, it considers the special nature of the areas of economics, law, and Catalan studies

Student graduation: to what extent does university expenditure matter?

Human capital is one of the most important channels via which universities positively affect regional development. This paper analyzes the relationship between university characteristics and graduation rates, and the role of regional characteristics in this process. We assemble a dataset for the entire public university system in Spain over the last decade. Observing the same university over several years helps us address the problema of unobserved heterogeneity. The main findings that can be drawn from our results are that university features, such as expenditure, student-teacher ratio and financial-aid to students are important in accounting for graduation rates. Likewise, regional characteristics such as labour market conditions appear to matter when generating graduate students

From Zero To Infinity: The Use Of Impact Factors In The Evaluation Of Economic Research In Spain

In the present study, we examine the use of short lists of journals in order to assess research performance in Spain - a country that features a rare combination of a thin and incomplete academic market along with an elite of eminent economists. Our analysis reveals that the implementation of bibliometric tools to produce short lists of journals for assessment purposes entail problems with the statistical significance of cutoff rates, neglect of the interdisciplinary nature of economics, and an inability to track progress in academic markets that move towards internationalization and publications in top-tier, premier outlets.