IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0223415.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scientific output scales with resources. A comparison of US and European universities

Author

Listed:
  • Benedetto Lepori
  • Aldo Geuna
  • Antonietta Mira

Abstract

By using a comprehensive dataset of US and European universities, we demonstrate super-linear scaling between university revenues and their volume of publications and (field-normalized) citations. We show that this relationship holds both in the US and in Europe. In terms of resources, our data show that three characteristics differentiate the US system: (1) a significantly higher level of resources for the entire system, (2) a clearer distinction between education-oriented institutions and doctoral universities and (3) a higher concentration of resources among doctoral universities. Accordingly, a group of US universities receive a much larger amount of resources and have a far higher number of publications and citations when compared to their European counterparts. These results demonstrate empirically that international rankings are by and large richness measures and, therefore, can be interpreted only by introducing a measure of resources. Implications for public policies and institutional evaluation are finally discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Benedetto Lepori & Aldo Geuna & Antonietta Mira, 2019. "Scientific output scales with resources. A comparison of US and European universities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-18, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0223415
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0223415
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223415
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223415&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0223415?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aldo Geuna, 2001. "The Changing Rationale for European University Research Funding: Are There Negative Unintended Consequences?," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(3), pages 607-632, September.
    2. Bartolucci, F. & Scaccia, L., 2005. "The use of mixtures for dealing with non-normal regression errors," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 821-834, April.
    3. Andrea Bonaccorsi, 2007. "Explaining poor performance of European science: Institutions versus policies," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 34(5), pages 303-316, June.
    4. Ellen Hazelkorn, 2009. "Rankings and the battle for world-class excellence: Institutional strategies and policy choices," Higher Education Management and Policy, OECD Publishing, vol. 21(1), pages 1-22.
    5. Marlo M Vernon & E Andrew Balas & Shaher Momani, 2018. "Are university rankings useful to improve research? A systematic review," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(3), pages 1-15, March.
    6. David J. Weerts & Justin M. Ronca, 2012. "Understanding Differences in State Support for Higher Education across States, Sectors, and Institutions: A Longitudinal Study," The Journal of Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 83(2), pages 155-185, March.
    7. Daraio, Cinzia & Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Simar, Léopold, 2015. "Efficiency and economies of scale and specialization in European universities: A directional distance approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 430-448.
    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. Roger Koenker & Kevin F. Hallock, 2001. "Quantile Regression," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 143-156, Fall.
    10. repec:dau:papers:123456789/12525 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Hicks, Diana, 2012. "Performance-based university research funding systems," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 251-261.
    12. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2016. "A farewell to the MNCS and like size-independent indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 646-651.
    13. Andrea Bonaccorsi & Tindaro Cicero & Peter Haddawy & Saeed-UL Hassan, 2017. "Explaining the transatlantic gap in research excellence," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(1), pages 217-241, January.
    14. Hansen, Christian B., 2007. "Generalized least squares inference in panel and multilevel models with serial correlation and fixed effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 670-694, October.
    15. 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.
    16. Loet Leydesdorff & Paul Wouters & Lutz Bornmann, 2016. "Professional and citizen bibliometrics: complementarities and ambivalences in the development and use of indicators—a state-of-the-art report," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 2129-2150, December.
    17. Diana Hicks & Paul Wouters & Ludo Waltman & Sarah de Rijcke & Ismael Rafols, 2015. "Bibliometrics: The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics," Nature, Nature, vol. 520(7548), pages 429-431, April.
    18. Waltman, Ludo & van Eck, Nees Jan, 2015. "Field-normalized citation impact indicators and the choice of an appropriate counting method," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 872-894.
    19. Anthony F J van Raan, 2013. "Universities Scale Like Cities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-14, March.
    20. Önder Nomaler & Koen Frenken & Gaston Heimeriks, 2014. "On Scaling of Scientific Knowledge Production in U.S. Metropolitan Areas," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(10), pages 1-6, October.
    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. Gustavo Vaccaro & Pablo Sánchez-Núñez & Patricia Witt-Rodríguez, 2022. "Bibliometrics Evaluation of Scientific Journals and Country Research Output of Dental Research in Latin America Using Scimago Journal and Country Rank," Publications, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-22, August.
    2. Alex Stewart, 2022. "Who shuns entrepreneurship journals? Why? And what should we do about it?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 2043-2060, April.
    3. Boglárka Németh & Károly Németh & Jon N. Procter, 2021. "Informed Geoheritage Conservation: Determinant Analysis Based on Bibliometric and Sustainability Indicators Using Ordination Techniques," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-31, May.
    4. Renato Bruni & Giuseppe Catalano & Cinzia Daraio & Martina Gregori & Henk F. Moed, 2019. "Studying the Heterogeneity of European Higher Education Institutions," DIAG Technical Reports 2019-12, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza".
    5. Bornmann, Lutz & Gralka, Sabine & Anegón, Félix de Moya & Wohlrabe, Klaus, 2023. "Efficiency of universities and research-focused institutions worldwide: The introduction of a new input indicator reflecting institutional staff numbers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2).
    6. Muhammad Dimyati & Adhi Indra Hermanu, 2023. "Evaluating Research Efficiency in Indonesian Higher Education Institution," Evaluation Review, , vol. 47(2), pages 155-181, April.
    7. Renato Bruni & Giuseppe Catalano & Cinzia Daraio & Martina Gregori & Henk F. Moed, 2020. "Studying the heterogeneity of European higher education institutions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1117-1144, November.

    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. Leporia, Benedetto & Geuna, Aldo & Mira, Antonietta, 2018. "Scientific Output of US and European Universities Scales Super-linearly with Resources," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis LEI & BRICK - Laboratory of Economics of Innovation "Franco Momigliano", Bureau of Research in Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge, Collegio 201806, University of Turin.
    2. Raminta Pranckutė, 2021. "Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-59, March.
    3. Rodríguez-Navarro, Alonso & Brito, Ricardo, 2018. "Technological research in the EU is less efficient than the world average. EU research policy risks Europeans’ future," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 718-731.
    4. Daraio, Cinzia & Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Simar, Léopold, 2015. "Rankings and university performance: A conditional multidimensional approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 244(3), pages 918-930.
    5. Eugenio Petrovich, 2022. "Bibliometrics in Press. Representations and uses of bibliometric indicators in the Italian daily newspapers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2195-2233, May.
    6. Koski, Timo & Sandström, Erik & Sandström, Ulf, 2016. "Towards field-adjusted production: Estimating research productivity from a zero-truncated distribution," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 1143-1152.
    7. van den Besselaar, Peter & Heyman, Ulf & Sandström, Ulf, 2017. "Perverse effects of output-based research funding? Butler’s Australian case revisited," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 905-918.
    8. 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.
    9. Amara, Nabil & Rhaiem, Mehdi & Halilem, Norrin, 2020. "Assessing the research efficiency of Canadian scholars in the management field: Evidence from the DEA and fsQCA," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 296-306.
    10. Rafols, Ismael & Stirling, Andy, 2020. "Designing indicators for opening up evaluation. Insights from research assessment," SocArXiv h2fxp, Center for Open Science.
    11. Dag W. Aksnes & Liv Langfeldt & Paul Wouters, 2019. "Citations, Citation Indicators, and Research Quality: An Overview of Basic Concepts and Theories," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440198, February.
    12. 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.
    13. Brito, Ricardo & Rodríguez-Navarro, Alonso, 2018. "Research assessment by percentile-based double rank analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 315-329.
    14. Marlo M. Vernon & Frances M. Yang, 2023. "Use of Latent Profile Analysis to Model the Translation of University Research into Health Practice and Policy: Exploration of Proposed Metrics," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 64(7), pages 1058-1070, November.
    15. Frenken, Koen & Heimeriks, Gaston J. & Hoekman, Jarno, 2017. "What drives university research performance? An analysis using the CWTS Leiden Ranking data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 859-872.
    16. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Andrea Ciriaco & Grilli, Leonardo, 2016. "From rankings to funnel plots: The question of accounting for uncertainty when assessing university research performance," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 854-862.
    17. Groen-Xu, Moqi & Bös, Gregor & Teixeira, Pedro A. & Voigt, Thomas & Knapp, Bernhard, 2023. "Short-term incentives of research evaluations: Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(6).
    18. Brooks, Chris & Schopohl, Lisa & Walker, James T., 2023. "Comparing perceptions of the impact of journal rankings between fields," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    19. Domingo Docampo & Lawrence Cram, 2019. "Highly cited researchers: a moving target," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(3), pages 1011-1025, March.
    20. Gregorio González-Alcaide, 2021. "Bibliometric studies outside the information science and library science field: uncontainable or uncontrollable?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(8), pages 6837-6870, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:plo:pone00:0223415. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.