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The effects of economic incentives on research have been widely debated in the literature. Some authors deem them to have no or even an adverse impact, particularly if they are perceived as irrelevant to or an attempt to control researcher activity, whilst others believe they enhance research productivity by inducing new habits such as international collaboration or publication in high-impact journals. In 2007 the Carlos III University of Madrid introduced bonuses associated with research merits to reward research and educational excellence. The policy aims to enhance the quantity and quality of the institution’s scholarly publications. This study analyses whether and to what extent the new policy has had a potential effect on scientific output, impact and visibility. Scientific activity indicators between 1991 and 2018 were analysed and a state-space model was used to establish possible scenarios (pre- and post-bonus periods) and 3 year predictions. Further to the findings, despite weak growth in researcher staff size, the number of papers rose during the period slightly more than in the pre-bonus simulation. The number of first-quartile papers also rose substantially, attesting to higher impact and visibility of the university’s research. Greater internationalisation was also observed. The incentives were found to be highly suggestive of a change in university researchers’ publication habits., Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Depto. de Biblioteconomía y Documentación, Fac. de Ciencias de la Documentación, TRUE, pub

The development policies of the European Union have a number of objectives such as eradicating poverty, promoting gender equality or environmental challenges, facts that are as well Sustainable Development Goals. In this context, the objective of this work is to know the role of Spanish organizations in European projects related to international cooperation, analyzing participating institutions, thematic lines, etc., Las políticas de desarrollo de la Unión Europea tienen una serie de objetivos como son erradicar la pobreza, promover la igualdad entre hombres y mujeres o los desafíos ambientales, siendo además estos Objetivos del Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS). En este marco, el objetivo de este trabajo es conocer el papel de los organismos españoles en los proyectos europeos, relacionados con cooperación internacional, analizando las instituciones participantes, líneas temáticas, etc., Les politiques de développement de l’Union européenne ont un certain nombre d’objectifs tels que l’éradication de la pauvreté, de promouvoir l’égalité entre les hommes et les femmes ou les défis environnementaux, et est également la réalisation des objectifs de développement durable. Dans ce contexte, l’objectif de cette étude était de déterminer le rôle des organisations espagnoles dans des projets européens liés à la coopération internationale, l’analyse des institutions participantes, les lignes thématiques, etc.

[EN] Scientific journals play a key role in the dissemination of research as the main channel for its transmission and, therefore, should contribute to the promotion of gender equity through their editorial policies and publication processes. This study analyzes various indicators with respect to editorial policies such as the use of inclusive language, the inclusion of the full name in the authorship and gender in the source data. It also includes indicators related to the visibility of women in the publication process, such as their presence on editorial committees, in editorial management tasks and in manuscript review processes. The study covers 301 quality Spanish scientific journals. The results are analyzed according to the thematic areas of the journals and their publishers. This analysis represents a new milestone in this field as it raises awareness and disseminates standards in scientific publishing to eliminate gender barriers., [ES] Las revistas científicas, como canal de transmisión de la investigación, deben contribuir a la promoción de la igualdad de género a través, tanto de sus políticas editoriales, como en sus procesos de publicación. Este estudio analiza diversos indicadores respecto a las políticas editoriales como el uso de lenguaje inclusivo, la inclusión del nombre completo en las autorías y del sexo en los datos de origen de los casos de estudio. También otros relacionados con la visibilidad de la mujer en los procesos de publicación como son su presencia en comités asesores, en tareas de gestión editorial y en los procesos de revisión. El estudio abarca 301 revistas científicas españolas de calidad. Los resultados se analizan en función de las áreas temáticas de las revistas y su entidad editorial. Este análisis representa un hito novedoso ya que supone una toma de conciencia y una difusión de estándares en la edición científica para eliminar barreras de género.

Desde el año 2008 la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT) lleva a cabo, con carácter bienal, la Convocatoria de Evaluación de la Calidad Editorial y Científica de Revistas Científicas Españolas, cuyo objetivo principal es evaluar la calidad de las revistas científicas españolas a través de una serie de indicadores relacionados con los procesos editoriales y su calidad científica. En 2020 se publica la séptima edición del Sello de Calidad y, entre sus nuevos indicadores, se incluyen las buenas prácticas editoriales en igualdad de género con un doble objetivo. Por un lado, dar cuenta de la visibilidad de la mujer en el mundo editorial. Por otro, medir cómo la política editorial se adecúa a las políticas de igualdad de género. El objetivo de este estudio es analizar los distintos aspectos dentro del cumplimiento del indicador de buenas prácticas editoriales en igualdad de género y detectar en cuáles de los procesos editoriales tienen más presencia las mujeres. Los datos de análisis se obtienen de la información pública de las revistas y de la documentación presentada para su evaluación en la séptima convocatoria de evaluación de revistas científicas españolas llevada a cabo por FECYT durante 2021. Entre los resultados se analizará la paridad de género en los órganos que conforman diversos comités de las revistas presentadas en esta última convocatoria y cómo sus políticas editoriales propician un enfoque igualitario entre hombres y mujeres.

Research fronts (RFs) represent the most dynamic areas of science and technology and the topics that receive higher attention in a specific field. Their identification has become the focus of global scientific and technological competition. In this study, we performed an analysis of the In-Cites RFs from Web of Science (WoS) in seven Spanish universities as a case study in the period 2015–2019. Our purpose is threefold: (1) to develop a methodology for approximating the ‘alignment’ of scientific articles with the RFs, (2) to test if Highly Cited Papers (HCP) from these universities are more aligned with RFs than the rest of the output, and (3) to test if papers aligned with RFs receive more citations per document than those not aligned. The study uses a novel retrieval method, and the analysis is conducted using a coincidence method (comparison with a standard), in which Mann–Kendall’s test and Pearson’s correlation are used. The results show that there is alignment between output and the HCP and those better aligned, present greater mean ranks of citations per article. This study shows the usefulness of RFs for orienting the research priorities at the institutional level for the university.

Purpose: Study how economic parameters affect positions in the Academic Ranking of World Universities' top 500 published by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Graduate School of Education in countries/regions with listed higher education institutions. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology used capitalises on the multi-variate characteristics of the data analysed. The multi-colinearity problem posed is solved by running principal components prior to regression analysis, using both classical (OLS) and robust (Huber and Tukey) methods. Findings: Our results revealed that countries/regions with long ranking traditions are highly competitive. Findings also showed that some countries/regions such as Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, and Italy, had a larger number of universities in the top positions than predicted by the regression model. In contrast, for Japan, a country where social and economic performance is high, the number of ARWU universities projected by the model was much larger than the actual figure. In much the same vein, countries/regions that invest heavily in education, such as Japan and Denmark, had lower than expected results. Research limitations: Using data from only one ranking is a limitation of this study, but the methodology used could be useful to other global rankings. Practical implications: The results provide good insights for policy makers. They indicate the existence of a relationship between research output and the number of universities per million inhabitants. Countries/regions, which have historically prioritised higher education, exhibited highest values for indicators that compose the rankings methodology; furthermore, minimum increase in welfare indicators could exhibited significant rises in the presence of their universities on the rankings. Originality/value: This study is well defined and the result answers important questions about characteristics of countries/regions and their higher education system.

Higher education institutions have been steadily progressing towards the integration of sustainable practices in their university system. Consequently, an increasing number of these institutions have recognized their responsibility and are incorporating sustainability into their operations, and practices, following a holistic approach. Despite these efforts in the implementation, there are still many challenges to pursue sustainability. In the Spanish framework, there is a lack of studies that investigate sustainable development in higher education by considering all the dimensions. Especially, the efforts of the Spanish Universities in research have been scarcely analysed in detail. This study analyze how Spanish Public and Private Universities (SUE) are integrating sustainability into their institutions by the following dimensions: Research (based on a search strategy proposed by considering the social, economic and environmental perspective); Internationalization (participation in GreenMetrics ranking and European Framework projects), University Governance (Strategic Plans); Assessment and Reporting (Sustainability Plans) and Campus Operations (Green offices). The findings reveal that some institutions present a higher production of scientific activity on the topic (e.g. UAB), while others with less production are more specialized (e.g. UA). The commitment of the universities has increased over time but it varies greatly among different kind of universities, especially in favour of the public institutions. By analyzing the correlation between sustainability practice, it was found that there are high association between some of the variables i.e. sustainability plan and having a green office. However, this study clearly demonstrates that although SD is recognized as being very important to HEIs and society, it is not yet embedded in the whole system’s strategies, activities, and policies.

This paper presents a methodological proposal based on the identification of highly cited papers (HCPs) at domestic-level in the Spanish Public University System (SUPE), in order to find the most outstanding publications in the local context. The principal aim is to detect different activity and impact profiles among Spanish universities and differentiate those institutions that play a more significant role. To determine which and how many are the highly cited papers at the domestic level (HCP-DL) collected in the Web of Science, three citation thresholds (1, 5, and 10%) were established. Thematic classification in Incites/Essential Science Indicators areas is used. The results show a preponderance of HCPs in the field of Space Science, while the polytechnic universities have high visibility in the Computer Science area. It has been observed that the presence of HCPs in a given area is involved with universities specialized in teaching and research activities. In absolute terms, the big non-specialized universities are major producers of HCPs and hold the leading positions in our results. However, when efficiency is analyzed in relative terms, some small, specialized universities reveal themselves to be more efficient at producing HCPs (% of HCPs or citations per HCP). We think that this methodology, due to its simplicity, its ease of calculation, and the knowledge it provides, can be very useful to analyze the national systems of any country, in order to know the impact and visibility of the research carried out in its scientific institutions or research areas.

Conferences are deeply connected to research fields, in this case bibliometrics. As such, they are a venue to present and discuss current and innovative research, and play an important role for the scholarly community. In this article, we provide an overview on the history of conferences in bibliometrics. We conduct an analysis to list the most prominent conferences that were announced in the newsletter by ISSI, the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics. Furthermore, we describe how conferences are connected to learned societies and journals. Finally, we provide an outlook on how conferences might change in future.

The characteristics of the production and dissemination of scientific activity in social sciences and humanities make such endeavours less visible than other areas in international databases. The same circumstances also limit the evaluation of journals, researchers and institutions and complicate the quality-based comparison of scientific-scholarly journals. This study presents a methodology developed in order to classify the Spanish journals of social science and humanities. With the aim of considering national journals in research activity evaluation processes, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) has sponsored and coordinated the development of a classification that allows journals that have obtained the FECYT Quality Seal to be ranked. For this purpose, a model with two dimensions (impact and visibility) based on quantitative criteria has been carried out. To obtain indicators in each of these dimensions, databases such as the Science Citation Index, the Social Science Citation Index, the Arts & Humanities Citation Index and the Emerging Sources Citation Index from the Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, SciELO, Google Metrics and the Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals are used as sources of information. Spanish evaluation agencies have recently announced the implementation of this evaluation methodology in various disciplines.

Energy efficiency is part of the commitment to environmental sustainability made by the organizations that promote and finance research and by the researchers that make this field their subject of study. Although there is growing interest in the subject, it is worth asking whether the research has been approached considering citizens’ needs or citizens’ participation. The main objective of this study is to analyse whether energy efficiency research has adopted a citizen science perspective. Using scientometric methods, the SCOPUS and CORDIS databases were consulted and a document search strategy was developed to gather information on publications and projects. The analysis revealed that, out of 265 projects under the Seventh Framework Programme on Energy Efficiency, only seven (3%) were related to citizen science. Although there is a large volume of publications on energy efficiency (over 200,000) and a considerable number of publications on citizen science (>30,000 articles), only 336 documents were identified that deal with both topics. The number of projects and publications on these topics has increased in recent years, with universities being the institutions that have published the most. Content analysis found that the most frequent topics are public perception of the use of renewable energies; citizen participation in measures to address climate change and global warming; and the involvement of different stakeholders in the use and responsible consumption of energy. Finally, information was collected on the impact of these publications on social media and altmetric tools. It was revealed that 33% of the 336 papers have had a presence in different sources, especially Twitter. This is a high figure compared with the dissemination achieved by papers from other disciplines.