IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v110y2017i2d10.1007_s11192-016-2189-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Academic performance and institutional resources: a cross-country analysis of research universities

Author

Listed:
  • Domingo Docampo

    (Universidade de Vigo
    Australian National University)

  • Lawrence Cram

    (Australian National University
    Charles Darwin University)

Abstract

Links between institutional academic performance and academic resources are of relevance for university managers, country officials and the public at large. This study aims to shed light on the issues using reliable data on research performance indicators as well as educational and resource indicators from research universities in Spain, Italy, Australia and Canada. The four countries selected for the study represent different academic traditions and belong to different geopolitical regions, yet they have relatively similar higher education systems in terms of student population, institutional resources and research production. Our study explores differences and similarities among them to better assess the performance of research universities from the four countries in a global context. The indicator set includes research production (number of indexed articles per year) and its quality (citation impact and number of highly cited papers), education production (full-time equivalent FTE student load and degree completions per year) and the resource base (annual ordinary expenditure and FTE number of faculty). We consider the raw indicators as well as a set of composite indicators normalised by measures of scale. Across the profile of universities in our complete sample, institutional size is the prime determinant of research production, with systematic differences in quality related to country, research intensity and resourcing level. Our data show that research universities allocate resources to research and education in country-specific and size-specific ways that are reflected in research performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Domingo Docampo & Lawrence Cram, 2017. "Academic performance and institutional resources: a cross-country analysis of research universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(2), pages 739-764, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:110:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-016-2189-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-016-2189-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-016-2189-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-016-2189-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Domingo Docampo, 2011. "On using the Shanghai ranking to assess the research performance of university systems," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 86(1), pages 77-92, January.
    2. Melville L. McMillan & Debasish Datta, 1998. "The Relative Efficiencies of Canadian Universities: A DEA Perspective," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 24(4), pages 485-511, December.
    3. Crespi, Gustavo A. & Geuna, Aldo, 2008. "An empirical study of scientific production: A cross country analysis, 1981-2002," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 565-579, May.
    4. Domingo Docampo & Lawrence Cram, 2015. "On the effects of institutional size in university classifications: the case of the Shanghai ranking," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1325-1346, February.
    5. A. Saichev & Y. Malevergne & D. Sornette, 2008. "Theory of Zipf's Law and of General Power Law Distributions with Gibrat's law of Proportional Growth," Papers 0808.1828, arXiv.org.
    6. 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.
    7. Pilar Murias & José Miguel & David Rodríguez, 2008. "A Composite Indicator for University Quality Assesment: The Case of Spanish Higher Education System," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 89(1), pages 129-146, October.
    8. Hicks, Diana, 2012. "Performance-based university research funding systems," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 251-261.
    9. Auranen, Otto & Nieminen, Mika, 2010. "University research funding and publication performance--An international comparison," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 822-834, July.
    10. Michel Zitt & Suzy Ramanana-Rahary & Elise Bassecoulard, 2003. "Correcting glasses help fair comparisons in international science landscape: Country indicators as a function of ISI database delineation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 56(2), pages 259-282, February.
    11. Li, Baibing & Martin, Elaine B. & Morris, A. Julian, 2002. "On principal component analysis in L1," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 471-474, September.
    12. Moed, Henk F. & de Moya-Anegón, Félix & López-Illescas, Carmen & Visser, Martijn, 2011. "Is concentration of university research associated with better research performance?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 649-658.
    13. Anthony F. J. van Raan, 2005. "Fatal attraction: Conceptual and methodological problems in the ranking of universities by bibliometric methods," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 62(1), pages 133-143, January.
    14. Abbott, M. & Doucouliagos, C., 2003. "The efficiency of Australian universities: a data envelopment analysis," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 89-97, February.
    15. Tommaso Agasisti & Geraint Johnes, 2009. "Beyond frontiers: comparing the efficiency of higher education decision-making units across more than one country," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 59-79.
    16. Thed N. Van Leeuwen & Henk F. Moed & Robert J. W. Tijssen & Martijn S. Visser & Anthony F. J. Van Raan, 2001. "Language biases in the coverage of the Science Citation Index and its consequencesfor international comparisons of national research performance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 51(1), pages 335-346, April.
    17. Francesca Lotti & Enrico Santarelli, 2004. "Industry Dynamics and the Distribution of Firm Sizes: A Nonparametric Approach," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(3), pages 443-466, January.
    18. Calogero Guccio & Marco Ferdinando Martorana & Isidoro Mazza, 2016. "Efficiency assessment and convergence in teaching and research in Italian public universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1063-1094, June.
    19. Giancarlo Gasperoni, 2011. "Reform of the Italian University Educational System and Evolution of Selected Characteristics of Its Graduates (2000-2009)," Working Papers 3, AlmaLaurea Inter-University Consortium, revised Jul 2011.
    20. Domingo Docampo, 2011. "Erratum to: On using the Shanghai ranking to assess the research performance of university systems," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 86(1), pages 237-237, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. M. M. Segovia-González & I. Contreras, 2023. "A Composite Indicator to Compare the Performance of Male and Female Students in Educational Systems," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 181-212, January.
    2. Frode Eika Sandnes, 2021. "Everyone onboard? Participation ratios as a metric for research activity assessments within young universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6105-6113, July.
    3. Manuel Muñoz-Suárez & Natividad Guadalajara & José M. Osca, 2020. "A Comparative Analysis between Global University Rankings and Environmental Sustainability of Universities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(14), pages 1-19, July.
    4. Antonio Fernández-Cano & Elvira Curiel-Marin & Manuel Torralbo-Rodríguez & Mónica Vallejo-Ruiz, 2018. "Questioning the Shanghai Ranking methodology as a tool for the evaluation of universities: an integrative review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 2069-2083, September.
    5. Marek Kosmulski, 2018. "Are you in top 1% (1‰)?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(2), pages 557-565, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mehdi Rhaiem & Nabil Amara, 2020. "Determinants of research efficiency in Canadian business schools: evidence from scholar-level data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 53-99, October.
    2. Berlemann, Michael & Haucap, Justus, 2015. "Which factors drive the decision to opt out of individual research rankings? An empirical study of academic resistance to change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(5), pages 1108-1115.
    3. Muhammad Dimyati & Adhi Indra Hermanu, 2023. "Evaluating Research Efficiency in Indonesian Higher Education Institution," Evaluation Review, , vol. 47(2), pages 155-181, April.
    4. Shibayama, Sotaro & Baba, Yasunori, 2015. "Impact-oriented science policies and scientific publication practices: The case of life sciences in Japan," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 936-950.
    5. Osmo Kivinen & Juha Hedman & Kalle Artukka, 2017. "Scientific publishing and global university rankings. How well are top publishing universities recognized?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(1), pages 679-695, July.
    6. Sandström, Ulf & Van den Besselaar, Peter, 2018. "Funding, evaluation, and the performance of national research systems," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 365-384.
    7. Guo Chen & Lu Xiao & Chang-ping Hu & Xue-qin Zhao, 2015. "Identifying the research focus of Library and Information Science institutions in China with institution-specific keywords," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(2), pages 707-724, May.
    8. Nicolás Robinson-García & Daniel Torres-Salinas & Emilio Delgado López-Cózar & Francisco Herrera, 2014. "An insight into the importance of national university rankings in an international context: the case of the I-UGR rankings of Spanish universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1309-1324, November.
    9. Pin-Hua Lin & Jong-Rong Chen & Chih-Hai Yang, 2014. "Academic research resources and academic quality: a cross-country analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 109-123, October.
    10. Mehdi Rhaiem, 2017. "Measurement and determinants of academic research efficiency: a systematic review of the evidence," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(2), pages 581-615, February.
    11. Gnewuch, Matthias & Wohlrabe, Klaus, 2018. "Super-efficiency of education institutions: an application to economics departments," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 26, pages 610-623.
    12. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "Evaluating university research: Same performance indicator, different rankings," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 514-525.
    13. Tanel Hirv, 2022. "The interplay of the size of the research system, ways of collaboration, level, and method of funding in determining bibliometric outputs," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(3), pages 1295-1316, March.
    14. Peder Olesen Larsen & Markus Ins, 2010. "The rate of growth in scientific publication and the decline in coverage provided by Science Citation Index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(3), pages 575-603, September.
    15. Kristof De Witte & Laura López-Torres, 2017. "Efficiency in education: a review of literature and a way forward," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 68(4), pages 339-363, April.
    16. Benedetto, Lepori & Geuna, Aldo & Veglio, Valerio, 2017. "A Typology of European Universities. Differentiation and resource distribution," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201705, University of Turin.
    17. Massucci, Francesco Alessandro & Docampo, Domingo, 2019. "Measuring the academic reputation through citation networks via PageRank," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 185-201.
    18. Jan Schulz, 2016. "Using Monte Carlo simulations to assess the impact of author name disambiguation quality on different bibliometric analyses," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1283-1298, June.
    19. Yumei Fu, 2023. "The impact of government funding on research innovation: An empirical analysis of Chinese universities," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(1), pages 285-296, January.
    20. Calogero Guccio & Marco Ferdinando Martorana & Isidoro Mazza, 2016. "Efficiency assessment and convergence in teaching and research in Italian public universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1063-1094, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:110:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-016-2189-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.