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In the current knowledge-based economy, the abilities of the national research system are a key driver of the country's competitiveness and socio-economic development. This paper compares the scientific standing of the OECD countries and eight other relevant economies. We use a bibliometric indicator of research performance, applied first at the individual level. This approach avoids the distortions of the aggregate-level analyses extant in literature and practice, which overlook the different publication intensities across research fields. We find a strong correlation between research performance and the economic competitiveness of nations and a moderate but significant correlation between research performance and the propensity to spend on research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographic proximity is widely acknowledged as a primary catalyst for research collaborations in general, and specifically for cross-sector collaborations. This study proposes a large-scale empirical analysis to examine the moderating role of certain territorial features of research infrastructure in the relationship between geographic distance and collaboration type. Our approach employs bibliometrics, using individual Italian coauthors of publications from both private and public sectors as the units of analysis. On average, cross-sector collaborations exhibit greater distances compared to intra-sector public collaborations. Importantly, this outcome is attributed to the uneven territorial distribution of private R&D in Italy. Specifically, as the size of research staff in private organizations within a region increases, the average distance of cross-sector collaborations tends to decrease significantly. A similar, though less pronounced, effect can be observed in regions with varying intensities of inventive activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explore the effects of Ukrainian policy reform, introducing Scopus and WoS publication requirements for professorship, on the publication behaviour and research performance of professors. Our analysis reveals a better scientific profile, at the time of promotion, of those who obtained professorship after the reform as compared to those who obtained it before. Also, we observe a bandwagon effect since the research performance gap between the two observed cohorts decreased after the introduction of the publication requirements. The statistical difference in differences tests revealed that in general, the incentive to produce more indexed publications worked. Nevertheless, it did not always led to higher research performance. Evidently, in several cases, the increase in research output was obtained at the expense of research impact. The effects of the reform could be far greater if combined with initiatives aimed at assessing Ukrainian professor performance regularly and extending the requirements and assessment to the impact of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work contrasts the scientific standing of the USA and Russia in 146 scientific disciplines. We consider four dimensions of competitive positioning: the contribution to global scientific advancement, the researchers' productivity, the scientific specialization indexes, and the efficiency in resource allocation across disciplines. Differently from previous literature, we use discipline-normalized output to input indicators, thus avoiding distortions due to different intensities of publication across disciplines. Results show that the USA outperforms Russia in contribution to world scholarly impact in all but four disciplines, and is more productive in all but two disciplines. The USA is less efficient in allocating resources to the disciplines where it performs better, probably due to its higher research diversification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes a scientometric approach to measure the change in research productivity of Italian academics before the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. We propose a composite output/input bibliometric indicator and apply it at the field level, conducting a longitudinal analysis. Although the number of academics in the national academic system has decreased, we register very strong growth in both the number of publications and their scholarly impact. The growth in productivity, with only rare exceptions, crosses almost all fields. However, in areas that are traditionally very internationalized (Biology, Physics, and Chemistry), growth is less sustained than overall average, and also the variability of productivity across fields seems reduced. The main reason for this detail would be the smaller margins for improvement in the fields that had already reached high international standing. What emerges from the analysis goes counter to some alarms of declining scientific productivity at the global level. The Italian case is partly explained by the historic adoption of policies aimed at strengthening competitive mechanisms, in particular through the introduction of systems of performance-based research funding, and bibliometric accreditation for professorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of previous research demonstrating the risks involved, and counsel against the practice as early as 1997, some research evaluations continue to use journal impact alone as a surrogate of the number of citations of hosted articles to assess the latter's impact. Such usage is also taken up by research administrators and policy-makers, with very serious implications. The aim of this work is to investigate the correlation between the citedness of a publication and the impact of the host journal. We extend the analyses of previous literature to all STEM fields. Then we also aim to assess whether this correlation varies across fields and is stronger for highly cited authors than for lowly cited ones. Our dataset consists of a total of almost one million authorships of 2010–2019 publications authored by about 28,000 professors in 230 research fields. Results show a low correlation between the two indicators, more so for lowly cited authors as compared to highly cited ones, although differences occur across fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of national research assessment exercises serves to evaluate the effectiveness of policies versus their objectives and to improve the formulation of future initiatives. The aim of the current study is to verify whether the introduction of the first performance-based research funding in Italy, based on the 2004–10 VQR assessment, achieved the intended objective of inducing greater international collaboration on the part of researchers. For this, we apply a bibliometric approach based on the observation of coauthorships in Italian and worldwide scientific publications over a 14-year period, beginning in the target years of the VQR assessment. Through an Interrupted Time Series Analysis, we compare the expected and observed patterns of international coauthorship for Italy and the rest of the world. Although the rate of internationalization of Italian research is seen to be increasing, whether this is a consequence of the VQR incentives, or rather part of a global phenomenon of recourse to international collaboration in response to the increasingly complex scientific challenges, it is open to interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University-industry research collaboration is one of the major research policy priorities of advanced economies. In this study, we try to identify the main drivers that could influence the propensity of academics to engage in research collaborations with the private sector, in order to better inform policies and initiatives to foster such collaborations. At this purpose, we apply an inferential model to a dataset of 32,792 Italian professors in order to analyze the relative impact of individual and contextual factors affecting the propensity of academics to engage in collaboration with industry, at overall level and across disciplines. The outcomes reveal that the typical profile of the professor collaborating with industry is a male under age 40, full professor, very high performer, with highly diversified research, and who has a certain tradition in collaborating with industry. This professor is likely to be part of a staff used to collaborating with industry, in a small university, typically a polytechnic, located in the north of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The massive shock of the COVID-19 pandemic has already shown its negative effects on economies around the world, unprecedented in recent history. COVID-19 infections and containment measures caused a general slowdown in research and new knowledge production. Because of the link between R&D output and economic growth, it is to be expected then that a slowdown in research activities will slow in turn the global recovery from the pandemic. Many recent studies also claim an uneven impact on scientific production across gender. In this paper, we investigate the phenomenon across countries, analysing preprint depositions in main repositories. Differently from other works, that compare the number of preprint depositions before and after the pandemic outbreak, we analyse the depositions trends across geographical areas, and contrast after-pandemic outbreak depositions with expected ones. Differently from common belief and initial evidence, the decrease in research output is not more severe for women than for men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the impact of Covid-19 on scientists' collaboration behaviour in the 14 countries with the largest research output. The approach is bibliometric, taking the unit of analysis of collaborations as the individual researchers and the co-authorships in their preprints. The time plot of the data confirms a clear discontinuity in the number of preprint depositions after the Covid-19 outbreak. Less evident is the discontinuity in average number of co-authors per preprint, and also in propensity to collaborate. Investigating further, a multivariate econometric analysis shows that for propensity to national collaboration (both intra- and extramural) there has been a positive "effect" from the pandemic, but negative one on international collaboration. The same analysis conducted by country, however, reveals that these effects are significant only in some countries and often with discordant signs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographic proximity is acknowledged to be a key factor in research collaborations. Specifically, it can work as a possible substitute for institutional proximity. The present study investigates the relevance of the "proximity" effect for different types of national research collaborations. We apply a bibliometric approach based on the Italian 2010–2017 scientific production indexed in the Web of Science. On such dataset, we apply statistical tools for analyzing if and to what extent geographical distance between co-authors in the byline of a publication varies across collaboration types, scientific disciplines, and along time. Results can inform policies aimed at effectively stimulating cross-sector collaborations, and also bear direct practical implications for research performance assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As members of the Distinguished Reviewers Board of I Scientometrics i and/or as recipients of the Derek de Solla Price Medal, we wish to express our disagreement with the retraction of the paper "Predatory publishing in Scopus: evidence on cross-country differences" co-authored by Vít Machácek and Martin Srholec (Machácek & Srholec, [1]). The retraction note does not demonstrate the alleged unreliability of the paper by Machácek and Srholec and therefore does not provide a sound justification for the retraction. Nicolas Robinson-Garcia has collaborated with Machácek and Srholec, and is Associate Editor of I Scientometrics i . [Extracted from the article]

In this introductory paper to the special issue on Scientometric Analysis in Business and Economics, we consider four related issues. First, we outline why we believe it is time to produce a special issue of the Journal of Economic Surveys dedicated to the scientometric analysis and its growing use in the fields of business and economics. Second, we focus on the topic of "evaluative scientometrics," which revolves around the central, basic, original question: how much is a publication worth? The question then is: how do we measure scholarly impact? In answering the question, many pitfalls exist and we identify some of them. Third, we present a brief overview of the seven papers, authored by twelve scientometricians, that constitute the special issue. The manuscripts show the potential of scientometrics in terms of the wide range of fields of application. Finally, we present a set of Guidelines which, if prospective authors in business and economics follow them, we hope will increase readability, impact and the potential for their scientometric‐based research to be published. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study on public–private research collaboration measures the variation over time of the propensity of academics to collaborate with colleagues from private companies. It also investigates the change in weights of the main drivers underlying the academics' propensity to collaborate, and whether the type profile of the collaborating academics changes. To do this, the study applies an inferential model on a dataset of professors working in Italian universities in consecutive periods, 2010–2013 and 2014–2017. The results, obtained at overall and field levels, support the formulation of policies aimed at fostering public–private research collaborations, and should be taken into account in postassessment of their effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments and organizations design performance-based research funding systems (PBRFS) for strategic aims, such as to selectively allocate scarce resources and stimulate research efficiency. In this work, we analyze the relative change in research productivity of Italian universities after the introduction of such a system, featuring financial and reputational incentives. Using a bibliometric approach, we compare the relative research performance of universities before and after the introduction of PBRFS, at the overall, discipline and field levels. The findings show convergence in the universities' performance, due above all to the remarkable improvement of the lowest performers. Geographically, the universities of the south (vs central and northern Italy) achieved the greatest improvement in relative performance. The methodology, and results, should be of use to university management and policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we develop a methodology to assess the scientific wealth of territories at field level. Our methodology uses a bibliometric approach based on the observation of academic research performance and overall scientific production in each territory. We apply it to assess disparities in the Italian territories in the medical specialties at the front line of the COVID-19 emergency. Italy has been the first among western countries to be severely affected by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study reveals remarkable inequities across territories, with scientific weaknesses concentrated in the south. Policies for rebalancing the north–south divide should also consider, in addition to tangible assets, the gap in production and availability of quality medical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work applies a new approach to measure knowledge flows. Assuming that citation linkages between articles imply a flow of knowledge from the cited to the citing authors, we investigate the geographic flows of scientific knowledge produced in Italy across its regions, at both overall and field level. Furthermore, we measure the the specialization indexes for outflows and inflows of knowledge by a given region. Findings show that larger regions in terms of research output are more likely net exporters of new knowledge. At the same time, we register a positive correlation between the share of intraregional flows and the size of overall scientific output of a region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we assess whether and to what extent the latest Italian national policy initiatives intended, among others, to contrast favoritism and foster recruitment effectiveness have resulted in the desired effects. To answer the question, we propose two related analyses. One compares the research performance ratings of recruits in two subsequent five-year periods, before and after the introduction of the above policy measures. The second analysis compares the effectiveness of recruitment by all Italian universities, in the above two subsequent five-year periods. The results from the comparisons show a decline of both unproductive and high-performing recruits, and no overall improvement in the effectiveness of recruitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy makers are interested in the influence of geographic distance on knowledge flows, however these can be expected to vary across research fields. The effects of geographic distance on flows are analyzed by means of citations to scientific literature. The field of observation consists of the 2010–2012 Italian publications and relevant citations up to the close of 2017. The geographic proximity effect is analyzed at national, continental, and intercontinental level in 244 fields, and results as evident at national level and in some cases at continental level, but not at intercontinental level. For flows between Italian municipalities, citations decrease with distance in all fields. At continental level, four fields are identified having knowledge flows that grow with distance; at intercontinental level, this occurs in 26 fields. The influence of distance is more limited in the fields of Humanities and Social sciences, much more significant in the Sciences, mainly in the Natural sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we try to answer the question of which method, peer review versus bibliometrics, better predicts the future overall scholarly impact of scientific publications. We measure the agreement between peer review evaluations of Web of Science indexed publications submitted to the first Italian research assessment exercise and long-term citations of the same publications. We do the same for an early citation-based indicator. We find that the latter shows stronger predictive power, i.e. it more reliably predicts late citations in all the disciplinary areas examined, and for any citation time window starting 1 year after publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work analyzes the differences in collaboration behavior between males and females among a particular type of scholars: top scientists, and as compared to non top scientists. The field of observation consists of the Italian academic system and the co-authorships of scientific publications by 11,145 professors. The results obtained from a cross-sectional analysis covering the 5-year period 2006–2010 show that there are no significant differences in the overall propensity to collaborate in the top scientists of the two genders. At the level of single disciplines there are no differences in collaboration behavior, except in the case of: (1) international collaborations, for mathematics and chemistry—where the propensity for collaboration is greater for males; and (2) extramural domestic collaborations in physics, in which it is the females that show greater propensity for collaboration. Because international collaboration is positively correlated to research performance, findings can inform science policy aimed at increasing the representation of female top performers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work investigates the research performance of foreign faculty in the Italian academic system. Incoming professors compose l.1% of total faculty across the sciences, although with variations by discipline. Their scientific performance measured over 2010–2014 is on average better than that of their Italian colleagues: the greatest difference is for associate professors. Psychology is the discipline with the greatest concentration of top foreign scientists. However, there are notable shares of unproductive foreign professors or of those with mediocre performance. The findings stimulate reflection on issues of national policy concerning attractiveness of the higher education system to skilled people from abroad, given the ongoing heavy Italian brain drain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intention of this work is to analyze top scientists' collaboration behavior at the "international", "domestic extramural" and "intramural" levels, and compare it to that of their lesser performing colleagues. The field of observation consists of the entire faculty of the Italian academic system, and so the coauthorship of scientific publications by over 12,000 professors. The broader aim is to improve understanding of the causal nexus between research collaboration and performance. The analysis is thus longitudinal, over two successive five-year periods. Results show a strong increase in the propensity to collaborate at domestic level (both extramural and intramural), however this is less for scientists who remain or become top, than it is for their lower-performing colleagues. In contrast, the increase in international collaboration behavior is greater for scientists who become or remain top than it is for their peers. The increase in productivity by those who acquire top scientist status is due precisely to the greater average impact of the publications achieved in collaboration with foreign colleagues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work verifies whether research diversification by a scientist is in some measure related to their collaboration with multidisciplinary teams. The analysis considers the publications achieved by 5300 Italian academics in the sciences over the period 2004-2008. The findings show that a scientist’s outputs resulting from research diversification are more often than not the result of collaborations with multidisciplinary teams. The effect becomes more pronounced with larger and particularly with more diversified teams. This phenomenon is observed both at the overall level and for the disciplinary macro-areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work we analyze the combined effects of gender, age and academic rank on the propensity of individual scholars to diversify their scientific activity. The aspect of research diversification is measured along three main dimensions, namely its extent and intensity and the cognitive relatedness of the fields of diversification. We apply two regression models to the dataset of scientific output of all Italian professors in the sciences over the period 2004–2008. The aim is to understand how personal and organizational traits can influence individual behaviors in terms of research diversification. Among other considerations, our findings urge caution in identifying research diversification as a co-determinant of the gender productivity gap between males and females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether and in what measure scientists tend to diversify their research activity, and if this tendency varies according to their belonging to different disciplinary areas. We analyze the nature of research diversification along three dimensions: extent of diversification, intensity of diversification, and degree of relatedness of topics in which researchers diversifies. For this purpose we propose three bibliometric indicators, based on the disciplinary placement of scientific output of individual scientists. The empirical investigation shows that the extent of diversification is lowest for scientists in Mathematics and highest in Chemistry; intensity of diversification is lowest in Earth sciences and highest in Industrial and information engineering; and degree of relatedness is lowest in Earth sciences and highest in Chemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper takes its place in the stream of studies that analyze the effect of interdisciplinarity on the impact of research output. Unlike previous studies, in this study the interdisciplinarity of the publications is not inferred through their citing or cited references, but rather by identifying the authors' designated fields of research. For this we draw on the scientific classification of Italian academics, and their publications as indexed in the WoS over a 5-year period (2004-2008). We divide the publications in three subsets on the basis the nature of co-authorship: those papers coauthored with academics from different fields, which show high intensity of inter-field collaboration ('specific' collaboration, occurring in 110 pairings of fields); those papers coauthored with academics who are simply from different 'non-specific' fields; and finally co-authorships within a single field. We then compare the citations of the papers and the impact factor of the publishing journals between the three subsets. The results show significant differences, generally in favor of the interdisciplinary authorships, in only one third (or slightly more) of the cases. The analysis provides the value of the median differences for each pair of publication subsets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research is to determine if the reference to a country in the title, keywords or abstract of a publication can influence its visibility (measured by the impact factor of the publishing journal) and citability (measured by the citations received). The study is based on Italian scientific production indexed in the Web of Science over the period 2004-2011. The analysis is conducted by comparing the values of four impact indicators for two subsets: (1) the indexed publications with a country's name in the title, keywords or abstract; (2) the remainder of the population, with no country' name. The results obtained both at the general level and by subject category show that publications with a country name systematically receive lower impact values, with the exception of a limited number of subject categories, Also, the incidence of highly-cited articles is lower for the first subset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work explores the distribution of citations for the publications of top scientists. A first objective is to find out whether the 80-20 Pareto rule applies, that is if 80 % of the citations to a top scientist's work concern 20 % of their publications. Observing that the rule does not apply, we also measure the dispersion of the citation distribution by means of the Gini coefficient. Further, we investigate the question of what share of a top scientist' publications go uncited. Finally, we study the relation between the dispersion of the citation distribution and the share of uncited publications. As well as the overall level, the analyses are carried out at the field and discipline level, to assess differences across them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work examines whether the macroeconomic divide between northern and southern Italy is also present at the level of higher education. The analysis confirms that the research performance in the sciences of the professors in the south is on average less than that of the professors in the north, and that this gap does not show noticeable variations at the level of gender or academic rank. For the universities, the gap is still greater. The study analyzes some possible determinants of the gap, and provides some policy recommendations for its reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prediction of the long-term impact of a scientific article is challenging task, addressed by the bibliometrician through resorting to a proxy whose reliability increases with the breadth of the citation window. In the national research assessment exercises using metrics the citation window is necessarily short, but in some cases is sufficient to advise the use of simple citations. For the Italian VQR 2011-2014, the choice was instead made to adopt a linear weighted combination of citations and journal metric percentiles, with weights differentiated by discipline and year. Given the strategic importance of the exercise, whose results inform the allocation of a significant share of resources for the national academic system, we examined whether the predictive power of the proposed indicator is stronger than the simple citation count. The results show the opposite, for all discipline in the sciences and a citation window above 2 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the relationship between research performance, age, and seniority in academic rank of full professors in the Italian academic system. Differently from a large part of the literature, our results generally show a negative monotonic relationship between age and research performance, in all the disciplines under analysis. We also highlight a positive relationship between seniority in rank and performance, occurring particularly in certain disciplines. While in medicine, biology, and chemistry this result could be explained by the 'accumulative advantage' effect, in other disciplines, like civil engineering, and pedagogy and psychology, it could be due to the existence of a large performance differential between young and mature researchers, at the moment of the promotion to full professors. These results, witnessed both generally and at the level of the individual disciplines, offer useful insights for policy makers and administrators in academia on the role of older professors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that women are underrepresented in the academic systems of many countries. Gender discrimination is one of the factors that could contribute to this phenomenon. This study considers a recent national academic recruitment campaign in Italy, examining whether women are subject to more or less bias than men. The findings show that no gender-related differences occur among the candidates who benefit from positive bias, while among those candidates affected by negative bias, the incidence of women is lower than that of men. Among the factors that determine success in a competition for an academic position, the number of the applicant's career years in the same university as the committee members assumes greater weight for male candidates than for females. Being of the same gender as the committee president is also a factor that assumes greater weight for male applicants. On the other hand, for female applicants, the presence of a full professor in the same university with the same family name as the candidate assumes greater weight than for male candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the determinants of professors' career advancement in Italian universities. From the analyses, it emerges that the fundamental determinant of an academic candidate's success is not scientific merit, but rather the number of years that the candidate has belonged to the same university as the president of the selection committee. Where applicants have participated in research work with the president, their probability of success also increases significantly. The factors of the years of service and occurrence of joint research with other members of the commission also have an effect, however, that carries less weight. Nepotism, although it exists, seems less important. The scientific quality of the members of the commission has a negligible effect on the expected outcome of the competition, and even less so the geographical location of the university holding the competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2004-2010 VQR ( Research Quality Evaluation), completed in July 2013, was Italy's second national research assessment exercise. The VQR performance evaluation followed a pattern also seen in other nations, as it was based on a selected subset of products. In this work, we identify the exercise's methodological weaknesses and measure the distortions that result from them in the university performance rankings. First, we create a scenario in which we assume the efficient selection of the products to be submitted by the universities and, from this, simulate a set of rankings applying the precise VQR rating criteria. Next, we compare these ' VQR rankings' with those that would derive from the application of more-appropriate bibliometrics. Finally, we extend the comparison to university rankings based on the entire scientific production for the period, as indexed in the Web of Science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underrepresentation of women in the academic system is a problem common to many countries, often associated with gender discrimination. In the Italian academic context in particular, favoritism is recognized as a diffuse phenomenon affecting hiring and career advancement. One of the questions that naturally arises is whether women who do assume decisional roles, having witnessed other phenomena of discrimination, would practice less favoritism than men in similar positions. Our analysis refers to the particular case of favoritism in the work of university selection committees responsible for career advancement. We observe a moderate positive association between competitions with expected outcomes and the fact the committee president is a woman. Although committees presided by women give more weight to scientific merit than those presided by men, favoritism still occurs. In fact, in the case the committee president is a woman, the single most important factor for the success of a candidate is joint research with the president, while in the case of male presidents, it is the years together in the same university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a worldwide trend towards application of bibliometric research evaluation, in support of the needs of policy makers and research administrators. However the assumptions and limitations of bibliometric measurements suggest a probabilistic rather than the traditional deterministic approach to the assessment of research performance. The aim of this work is to propose a multivariate stochastic model for measuring the performance of individual scientists and to compare the results of its application with those arising from a deterministic approach. The dataset of the analysis covers the scientific production indexed in Web of Science for the 2006-2010 period, of over 900 Italian academic scientists working in two distinct fields of the life sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Productivity is the quintessential indicator of efficiency in any production system. It seems it has become a norm in bibliometrics to define research productivity as the number of publications per researcher, distinguishing it from impact. In this work we operationalize the economic concept of productivity for the specific context of research activity and show the limits of the commonly accepted definition. We propose then a measurable form of research productivity through the indicator 'Fractional Scientific Strength (FSS)', in keeping with the microeconomic theory of production. We present the methodology for measure of FSS at various levels of analysis: individual, field, discipline, department, institution, region and nation. Finally, we compare the ranking lists of Italian universities by the two definitions of research productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many countries culture, practice or regulations inhibit the co-presence of relatives within the university faculty. We test the legitimacy of such attitudes and provisions, investigating the phenomenon of nepotism in Italy, a nation with high rates of favoritism. We compare the individual research performance of 'children' who have 'parents' in the same university against that of the 'non-children' with the same academic rank and seniority, in the same field. The results show non-significant differences in performance. Analyses of career advancement show that children's research performance is on average superior to that of their colleagues who did not advance. The study's findings do not rule out the existence of nepotism, which has been actually recorded in a low percentage of cases, but do not prove either the most serious presumed consequences of nepotism, namely that relatives who are poor performers are getting ahead of non-relatives who are better performers. In light of these results, many attitudes and norms concerning parental ties in academia should be reconsidered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education systems featuring intense competition have developed world-class universities, capable of attracting top professors and students and considerable public–private funding. This does not occur in non-competitive systems, where highly talented faculty and students are dispersed across all institutions. In such systems, the authors propose the budding of spin-off universities, staffed by the migration of top scientists from the entire public research system. This article illustrates the proposal through an example: the spin-off of a new university in Rome, Italy staffed with the best professors from the three current public city universities. Such a faculty would offer top national research productivity, a magnet to attract the other critical ingredients of a world-class university: talented students, abundant resources and visionary governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For policy-makers and managers of research organizations, improvement in performance is a constant objective. The potential presence of returns to scope of fields of research could influence decisions in planning the fields of activity of the research organization and the spatial positioning of its researchers in function of their specializations. We investigate the possible presence of returns to scope and the relation between scope of fields in an organization and intensity of interdisciplinary collaboration. The results, from analyzing the scientific collaborations of Italian university researchers over the years 2004-2008, seem to indicate that in general the scope of the research fields has no impact on the productivity of research or the intensity of interdisciplinary collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the current work is to identify the territorial scientific specializations present in Italy, at the levels of regions and provinces (NUTS2 and NUTS3). To do this, we take a bibliometric approach based on the scientific production of the entire public research system in the hard sciences sphere, for the 5 years 2006–10. In particular, we apply a new index of scientific specialization (Scientific Specialization Index, SSI) that takes account of both the quantity and quality of scientific production achieved by the research institutions of a given territory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the critical issues in national research assessment exercises concerns the choice of whether to evaluate the entire scientific portfolio of the institutions or a subset composed of the best products. Under the second option, the capacities of the institutions to select the appropriate researchers and their best products (the UK case) or simply the best products of every researcher (the Italian case) becomes critical, both for purposes of correct assessment of the real quality of research in the institutions evaluated, and for the selective funding that follows. In this work, through case studies of three Italian universities, we analyze the efficiency of the product selection that is intended to maximize the universities' scores in the current national research assessment exercise, the results of which will be the basis for assigning an important share of public financing over the coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to activate and manage effective collaborations is becoming an increasingly important criteria in policies on academic career advancement. The rise of such policies leads to development of indicators that permit measurement of the propensity to collaborate for academics of different ranks, and to examine the role of several variables in collaboration, first among these being the researchers' disciplines. In this work we apply an innovative bibliometric approach based on individual propensity for collaboration to measure the differences in propensity across academic ranks, by discipline and for choice of collaboration forms-intramural, extramural domestic and international. The analysis is based on the scientific production of Italian academics for the period 2006-2010, totaling over 200,000 publications indexed in Web of Science. It shows that assistant professors register a propensity for intramural collaboration that is clearly greater than for professors of higher ranks. Vice versa, the higher ranks, but not quite so clearly, register greater propensity to collaborate at the international level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many nations are adopting higher education strategies that emphasize the development of elite universities able to compete at the international level in the attraction of skills and resources. Elite universities pursue excellence in all their disciplines and fields of action. The impression is that this does not occur in 'non-competitive' education systems, and that instead, within single universities excellent disciplines will coexist with mediocre ones. To test this, the authors measure research productivity in the hard sciences for all Italian universities over the period 2004-2008 at the levels of the institution, their individual disciplines and fields within them. The results show that the distribution of excellent disciplines is not concentrated in a few universities: top universities show disciplines and fields that are often mediocre, while generally mediocre universities will often include top disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many governments have placed priority on excellence in higher education as part of their policy agendas. Processes for recruitment and career advancement in universities thus have a critical role. The efficiency of faculty selection processes can be evaluated by comparing the subsequent performance of competition winners against that of the losers and the pre-existing staff of equal academic rank. Our study presents an empirical analysis concerning the recruitment procedures for associate professors in the Italian university system. The results of a bibliometric analysis of the hard science areas reveal that new associate professors are on average more productive than the incumbents. However a number of crucial concerns emerge, in particular concerning occurrence of non-winner candidates that are more productive than the winners over the subsequent triennium, and cases of winners that are completely unproductive. Beyond the implications for the Italian case, the analysis offers considerations for all decision-makers regarding the ex post evaluation of the efficiency of the recruitment process and the desirability of providing selection committees with bibliometric indicators in support of evaluation (i.e. informed peer review). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate measurement of institutional research productivity should account for the real contribution of the research staff to the output produced in collaboration with other organizations. In the framework of bibliometric measurement, this implies accounting for both the number of co-authors and each individual’s real contribution to scientific publications. Common practice in the life sciences is to indicate such contribution through the order of author names in the byline. In this work, we measure the distortion introduced to university-level bibliometric productivity rankings when the number of co-authors or their position in the byline is ignored. The field of observation consists of all Italian universities active in the life sciences (Biology and Medicine). The analysis is based on the research output of the university staff over the period 2004–2008. Based on the results, we recommend against the use of bibliometric indicators that ignore co-authorship and real contribution of each author to research outputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is becoming ever more common to use bibliometric indicators to evaluate the performance of research institutions, however there is often a failure to recognize the limits and drawbacks of such indicators. Since performance measurement is aimed at supporting critical decisions by research administrators and policy makers, it is essential to carry out empirical testing of the robustness of the indicators used. In this work we examine the accuracy of the popular “ h” and “ g” indexes for measuring university research performance by comparing the ranking lists derived from their application to the ranking list from a third indicator that better meets the requirements for robust and reliable assessment of institutional productivity. The test population is all Italian universities in the hard sciences, observed over the period 2001–2005. The analysis quantifies the correlations between the three university rankings (by discipline) and the shifts that occur under changing indicators, to measure the distortion inherent in use of the h and g indexes and their comparative accuracy for assessing institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]