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How do you define and measure research productivity?

Author

Listed:
  • Giovanni Abramo

    (National Research Council of Italy)

  • Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo

    (National Research Council of Italy
    University of Rome “Tor Vergata”)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo, 2014. "How do you define and measure research productivity?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1129-1144, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:101:y:2014:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-014-1269-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-014-1269-8
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo & Flavia Di Costa, 2008. "Assessment of sectoral aggregation distortion in research productivity measurements," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(2), pages 111-121, June.
    2. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Tindaro Cicero, 2012. "What is the appropriate length of the publication period over which to assess research performance?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(3), pages 1005-1017, December.
    3. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Rhodes, E., 1978. "Measuring the efficiency of decision making units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 2(6), pages 429-444, November.
    4. Loet Leydesdorff & Lutz Bornmann, 2011. "How fractional counting of citations affects the impact factor: Normalization in terms of differences in citation potentials among fields of science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(2), pages 217-229, February.
    5. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Marco Solazzi, 2010. "National research assessment exercises: a measure of the distortion of performance rankings when labor input is treated as uniform," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(3), pages 605-619, September.
    6. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Francesco Rosati, 2013. "Measuring institutional research productivity for the life sciences: the importance of accounting for the order of authors in the byline," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 97(3), pages 779-795, December.
    7. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2012. "A sensitivity analysis of researchers’ productivity rankings to the time of citation observation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 192-201.
    8. Éric Archambault & David Campbell & Yves Gingras & Vincent Larivière, 2009. "Comparing bibliometric statistics obtained from the Web of Science and Scopus," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(7), pages 1320-1326, July.
    9. Alberto Pepe & Michael J Kurtz, 2012. "A Measure of Total Research Impact Independent of Time and Discipline," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-7, November.
    10. Linda Butler, 2007. "Assessing university research: A plea for a balanced approach," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 34(8), pages 565-574, October.
    11. Loet Leydesdorff & Jung C. Shin, 2011. "How to evaluate universities in terms of their relative citation impacts: Fractional counting of citations and the normalization of differences among disciplines," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(6), pages 1146-1155, June.
    12. Ludo Waltman & Clara Calero-Medina & Joost Kosten & Ed C.M. Noyons & Robert J.W. Tijssen & Nees Jan Eck & Thed N. Leeuwen & Anthony F.J. Raan & Martijn S. Visser & Paul Wouters, 2012. "The Leiden ranking 2011/2012: Data collection, indicators, and interpretation," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(12), pages 2419-2432, December.
    13. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2013. "Individual research performance: A proposal for comparing apples to oranges," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 528-539.
    14. Grit Laudel & Gloria Origgi, 2006. "Introduction to a special issue on the assessment of interdisciplinary research," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(1), pages 2-4, April.
    15. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Flavia Costa, 2011. "Research productivity: Are higher academic ranks more productive than lower ones?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(3), pages 915-928, September.
    16. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2012. "Revisiting the scaling of citations for research assessment," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 470-479.
    17. Opthof, Tobias & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2010. "Caveats for the journal and field normalizations in the CWTS (“Leiden”) evaluations of research performance," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 423-430.
    18. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2012. "A sensitivity analysis of research institutions’ productivity rankings to the time of citation observation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 298-306.
    19. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Rosati, Francesco, 2013. "The importance of accounting for the number of co-authors and their order when assessing research performance at the individual level in the life sciences," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 198-208.
    20. R. D. Banker & A. Charnes & W. W. Cooper, 1984. "Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(9), pages 1078-1092, September.
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