347 research outputs found
What is the appropriate length of the publication period over which to assess research performance?
National research assessment exercises are conducted in different nations
over varying periods. The choice of the publication period to be observed has
to address often contrasting needs: it has to ensure the reliability of the
results issuing from the evaluation, but also reach the achievement of frequent
assessments. In this work we attempt to identify which is the most appropriate
or optimal publication period to be observed. For this, we analyze the
variation of individual researchers' productivity rankings with the length of
the publication period within the period 2003-2008, by the over 30,000 Italian
university scientists in the hard sciences. First we analyze the variation in
rankings referring to pairs of contiguous and overlapping publication periods,
and show that the variations reduce markedly with periods above three years.
Then we will show the strong randomness of performance rankings over
publication periods under three years. We conclude that the choice of a three
year publication period would seem reliable, particularly for physics,
chemistry, biology and medicine
The dispersion of research performance within and between universities as a potential indicator of the competitive intensity in higher education systems
Higher education systems in competitive environments generally present top
universities, that are able to attract top scientists, top students and public
and private financing, with notable socio-economic benefits in their region.
The same does not hold true for non-competitive systems. In this study we will
measure the dispersion of research performance within and between universities
in the Italian university system, typically non-competitive. We will also
investigate the level of correlation that occurs between performance in
research and its dispersion in universities. The findings may represent a first
benchmark for similar studies in other nations. Furthermore, they lead to
policy indications, questioning the effectiveness of selective funding of
universities based on national research assessment exercises. The field of
observation is composed of all Italian universities active in the hard
sciences. Research performance will be evaluated using a bibliometric approach,
through publications indexed in the Web of Science between 2004 and 2008
Should the research performance of scientists be distinguished by gender?
The literature on gender differences in research performance seems to suggest
a gap between men and women, where the former outperform the latter. Whether
one agrees with the different factors proposed to explain the phenomenon, it is
worthwhile to verify if comparing the performance within each gender, rather
than without distinction, gives significantly different ranking lists. If there
were some structural factor that determined a penalty in performance of female
researchers compared to their male peers, then under conditions of equal
capacities of men and women, any comparative evaluations of individual
performance that fail to account for gender differences would lead to
distortion of the judgments in favor of men. In this work we measure the extent
of differences in rank between the two methods of comparing performance in each
field of the hard sciences: for professors in the Italian university system, we
compare the distributions of research performance for men and women and
subsequently the ranking lists with and without distinction by gender. The
results are of interest for the optimization of efficient selection in
formulation of recruitment, career advancement and incentive schemes
A sensitivity analysis of researchers' productivity rankings to the time of citation observation
In this work we investigate the sensitivity of individual researchers'
productivity rankings to the time of citation observation. The analysis is
based on observation of research products for the 2001-2003 triennium for all
research staff of Italian universities in the hard sciences, with the year of
citation observation varying from 2004 to 2008. The 2008 rankings list is
assumed the most accurate, as citations have had the longest time to accumulate
and thus represent the best possible proxy of impact. By comparing the rankings
lists from each year against the 2008 benchmark we provide policy-makers and
research organization managers a measure of trade-off between timeliness of
evaluation execution and accuracy of performance rankings. The results show
that with variation in the evaluation citation window there are variable rates
of inaccuracy across the disciplines of researchers. The inaccuracy results
negligible for Physics, Biology and Medicine
Revisiting the scaling of citations for research assessment
Over the past decade, national research evaluation exercises, traditionally
conducted using the peer review method, have begun opening to bibliometric
indicators. The citations received by a publication are assumed as proxy for
its quality, but they require standardization prior to use in comparative
evaluation of organizations or individual scientists: the citation data must be
standardized, due to the varying citation behavior across research fields. The
objective of this paper is to compare the effectiveness of the different
methods of normalizing citations, in order to provide useful indications to
research assessment practitioners. Simulating a typical national research
assessment exercise, he analysis is conducted for all subject categories in the
hard sciences and is based on the Thomson Reuters Science Citation
Index-Expanded. Comparisons show that the citations average is the most
effective scaling parameter, when the average is based only on the publications
actually cited
The impact of unproductive and top researchers on overall university research performance
Unlike competitive higher education systems, non-competitive systems show
relatively uniform distributions of top professors and low performers among
universities. In this study, we examine the impact of unproductive and top
faculty members on overall research performance of the university they belong
to. Furthermore, we analyze the potential relationship between research
productivity of a university and the indexes of concentration of unproductive
and top professors. Research performance is evaluated using a bibliometric
approach, through publications indexed on the Web of Science between 2004 and
2008. The set analyzed consists of all Italian universities active in the hard
sciences.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1810.13234,
arXiv:1810.13233, arXiv:arXiv:1810.13231, arXiv:1810.13281, arXiv:1810.1220
A sensitivity analysis of research institutions' productivity rankings to the time of citation observation
One of the critical issues in bibliometric research assessments is the time
required to achieve maturity in citations. Citation counts can be considered a
reliable proxy of the real impact of a work only if they are observed after
sufficient time has passed from publication date. In the present work the
authors investigate the effect of varying the time of citation observation on
accuracy of productivity rankings for research institutions. Research
productivity measures are calculated for all Italian universities active in the
hard sciences in the 2001-2003 period, by individual field and discipline, with
the time of the citation observation varying from 2004 to 2008. The objective
is to support policy-makers in choosing a citation window that optimizes the
tradeoff between accuracy of rankings and timeliness of the exercise
How important is choice of the scaling factor in standardizing citations?
Because of the variations in citation behavior across research fields,
appropriate standardization must be applied as part of any bibliometric
analysis of the productivity of individual scientists and research
organizations. Such standardization involves scaling by some factor that
characterizes the distribution of the citations of articles from the same year
and subject category. In this work we conduct an analysis of the sensitivity of
researchers' productivity rankings to the scaling factor chosen to standardize
their citations. To do this we first prepare the productivity rankings for all
researchers (more than 30,000) operating in the hard sciences in Italy, over
the period 2004-2008. We then measure the shifts in rankings caused by adopting
scaling factors other than the particular factor that seems more effective for
comparing the impact of publications in different fields: the citation average
of the distribution of cited-only publications
National peer-review research assessment exercises for the hard sciences can be a complete waste of money: the Italian case
There has been ample demonstration that bibliometrics is superior to
peer-review for national research assessment exercises in the hard sciences. In
this paper we examine the Italian case, taking the 2001-2003 university
performance rankings list based on bibliometrics as benchmark. We compare the
accuracy of the first national evaluation exercise, conducted entirely by
peer-review, to other rankings lists prepared at zero cost, based on indicators
indirectly linked to performance or available on the Internet. The results show
that, for the hard sciences, the costs of conducting the Italian evaluation of
research institutions could have been completely avoided
The dangers of performance-based research funding in non-competitive higher education systems
An increasing number of nations allocate public funds to research
institutions on the basis of rankings obtained from national evaluation
exercises. Therefore, in non-competitive higher education systems where top
scientists are dispersed among all the universities, rather than concentrated
among a few, there is a high risk of penalizing those top scientists who work
in lower-performance universities. Using a five-year bibliometric analysis
conducted on all Italian universities active in the hard sciences from
2004-2008, this work analyzes the distribution of publications and relevant
citations by scientists within the universities, measures the research
performance of individual scientists, quantifies the intensity of concentration
of top scientists at each university, provides performance rankings for the
universities, and indicates the effects of selective funding on the top
scientists of low-ranked universities
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