How long do top scientists maintain their stardom? An analysis by region, gender and discipline: evidence from Italy

We investigate the question of how long top scientists retain their stardom. We observe the research performance of all Italian professors in the sciences over three consecutive four-year periods, between 2001 and 2012. The top scientists of the first period are identified on the basis of research productivity, and their performance is then tracked through time. The analyses demonstrate that more than a third of the nation's top scientists maintain this status over the three consecutive periods, with higher shares occurring in the life sciences and lower ones in engineering. Compared to males, females are less likely to maintain top status. There are also regional differences, among which top status is less likely to survive in southern Italy than in the north. Finally we investigate the longevity of unproductive professors, and then check whether the career progress of the top and unproductive scientists is aligned with their respective performances. The results appear to have implications for national policies on academic recruitment and advancement

Excellent Researcher or Good Public Servant? The Interplay between Research and Academic Citizenship

Academics have always been endowed with the privilege of autonomy, but the diffusion of evaluation systems based on publication outcomes potentially jeopardizes the benefits deriving from behaviors that address other pillars of higher education. Besides research and teaching, academic citizenship, i.e., the service behaviors carried out within and outside organizational boundaries, are in fact cornerstones of university functioning. We investigate the relationship between academic citizenship and research after the introduction of an evaluation system that moves research performance to center stage on a dataset collecting publication records and service activities of 353 Italian scholars in the accounting discipline in the 2004-2013 period. A cluster analysis reveals different academics' orientations towards research and academic citizenship. We contribute to the debate on academic choices by showing that a large number of university members tend to focus on a single type of academic citizenship or to adopt a research orientation, while a significant part remains stuck in the middle without achieving satisfying performance in any domains according to international standards, and discuss implications for the design of behavioral incentives

Higher education, high-impact research, and world university rankings: A case of India and comparison with China

AbstractTo date, this paper is probably the first to compare Indian and Chinese universities on educational performance metrics such as high-impact research and world university rankings. The study, therefore, examines the current state of higher education, high-impact research metrics, and world university rankings in an emerging market of India. First, we present an overview of the higher education system, government schemes for academic research, and related educational statistics. Second, we compare India and China on various academic-research metrics (citable documents, number of citations, cites per document, and H-index in three categories), and world university rankings. Special attention is devoted to revealing the progress of management research metrics, business school accreditations and rankings, and abstracting and indexing of publishing journals. Last, we discuss several challenges in university education and recommend policy guidelines pertaining to research funding, collaborative research projects, and research assessment council for imparting quality academic practices and standards in a higher education environment. Our exploratory analysis indicates that for citable documents in the ‘all subjects’ category, the United States is ranked first, followed by China in second, the United Kingdom in third, and India in ninth. Overall, world university rankings and research metrics of Indian universities are found to be far behind those of Chinese universities

Eficiencia y Rankings en la gestión pública universitaria. Modelos de medición y comparación a través del Análisis Envolvente de Datos

Las instituciones de educación superior públicas en Colombia y España hacen parte de los Sistemas Universitarios Estatales de cada país, y en los últimos años asisten a retos y cambios importantes en términos de gestión, calidad y eficiencia. Los sistemas de control de gestión en las organizaciones públicas, los sistemas de educación superior, los sistemas de clasificación y/o categorización, son tres grandes tópicos que abordan su propia integralidad. Este estudio tiene como objetivo abordarlos con una mirada holística, abarcando el tema de la eficiencia en las universidades públicas y su relación con los rankings universitarios mundiales, a partir de un abordaje multidimensional y multivariable, que supere las limitaciones, restricciones y críticas de carácter metodológico soportadas en la literatura relevante. Metodológicamente se utilizan el Knowledge Development Process Constructivist (Proknow-c), que permite soportar el camino investigativo del tema en cuestión, el análisis de correlación canónica (ACC), que permite superar la monodimensionalidad y falta de confiabilidad en la representatividad de las variables input y output elegidas, el análisis de componentes principales (ACP), el análisis de factores (AF), el análisis de conglomerados (AC), el análisis envolvente de datos DEA, y la modelación logística.Los resultados obtenidos a partir del análisis de la literatura relevante permiten construir un camino sólido en materia de investigación. Con el cálculo preliminar de índices de eficiencia con modelos DEA y ACC se demuestra la conveniencia de realizar depuraciones previas de datos y variables a través de análisis multivariante. En cuanto a la relación entre estos índices de eficiencia y los rankings universitarios se puede indicar que las universidades con niveles medios de eficiencia y de docencia e investigación tienen bajas probabilidades de ser clasificadas. Las universidades públicas de Colombia y España deben hacer esfuerzos importantes para tener niveles máximos de eficiencia y de docencia e investigación para tener altas probabilidades de ser clasificados en rankings como el Academic Ranking World University (ARWU) y Quacquarelli Symonds University Rankings (QS) para las instituciones españolas y en QS_LAT, SCImago y Usapiens para las colombianas, haciendo énfasis en que la relación de los índices de eficiencia con estos rankings es poco significativa y que lo determinante en ambos sistemas tiende a ser el output docencia e investigación.La contribución de este trabajo es multidimensional, por su abordaje metodológico, a través de la utilización de herramientas estadísticas de análisis de literatura y de datos, con un carácter multivariante para discernir la cuestión de investigación, la estructura, variables, dimensiones, y unidades de análisis, que permiten resumir la realidad sujeta a la medición de eficiencia y su futura comparación con las posiciones en rankings nacionales e internacionales.Public higher education institutions in Colombia and Spain are part of the State University Systems of each country, and in recent years they have witnessed important challenges and changes in terms of management, quality and efficiency. Management control systems in public organizations, higher education systems, classification and / or categorization systems are three major topics that address their own comprehensiveness. This study aims to approach them with a holistic perspective, covering the issue of efficiency in public universities and its relationship with world university rankings, from a multidimensional and multivariable approach, which overcomes the limitations, restrictions and criticisms of a methodological nature. supported in relevant literature. Methodologically theKnowledge Development Process Constructivist (Proknow-c), which allows supporting the research path of the subject in question, canonical correlation analysis (ACC), which allows overcoming the monodimensionality and lack of reliability in the representativeness of the chosen input and output variables, the analysis of principal components (PCA), factor analysis (AF), cluster analysis (AC), DEA data envelope analysis, and logistic modeling. The results obtained from the analysis of the relevant literature allow building a solid path in research. With the preliminary calculation of efficiency indices with DEA ​​and ACC models, the convenience of carrying out previous cleaning of data and variables through multivariate analysis is demonstrated. Regarding the relationship between these efficiency indices and university rankings, it can be indicated that universities with medium levels of efficiency and teaching and research have low probabilities of being classified. The public universities of Colombia and Spain must make important efforts to have maximum levels of efficiency and teaching and research to have high probabilities of being classified in rankings such as the Academic Ranking World University (ARWU) and Quacquarelli Symonds University Rankings (QS) for the Spanish and QS_LAT, SCImago and institutions Usapiens for Colombia, emphasizing the relationship of efficiency rates with these rankings is insignificant and that the decisive factor in both systems tends to be the output teaching and investigación.La contribution of this The work is multidimensional, due to its methodological approach, through the use of statistical tools for the analysis of literature and data, with a multivariate character to discern the research question, the structure, variables, dimensions, and analysis units, which allow summarize the reality subject to efficiency measurement and its future comparison n with positions in national and international rankings