1 Introduction

Scientific production is the original creation of knowledge related to a specific discipline generated through systematized research processes using specific techniques, methods, and language (Aveiga et al. 2019, p. 235). This knowledge is disseminated to specialized scientific communities by publishing papers in indexed journals to achieve visibility and influence of the results. For this reason, a stable quality criterion is the inclusion of scientific and academic results in indexed journals with high standards, considered the preponderant format of scientific communication nowadays. Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) are the primary scientific databases worldwide due to their diverse knowledge fields, the high standards of their indexed journals, and their data management that allows specialized searches to be performed (Falagas et al. 2008, p. 340). These characteristics of Scopus and WoS have allowed bibliometric studies to be carried out and have been the basis for the research indicator of the most prestigious world university rankings such as Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE), and The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) (ARWU 2021; QS 2021; THE 2021). In this context, universities constitute the main academic space for developing scientific production and promoting publications in high-impact international journals. These academic institutions contribute to the scientific training of professionals involved in solving real problems that contribute to the social, economic, and technological development of a country. For this reason, the scientific evaluation of the university sector is essential to know its current state of contribution in a given field of knowledge (Escalante Cardoza and Ortiz Núñez 2021, p. 2; Roman-Gonzalez et al. 2019).

The Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) is a public access portal that includes journals and scientific indicators by country based on the information contained in the Scopus database (SJR 2021). The “architecture” subject category of the SJR shows that the countries with the highest scientific production are, at the same time, those with the highest economic development: the United States (31,411), China (17,845), and Japan (9,217) lead the world ranking according to the number of documents published from 1996 to 2020 (SJR 2020a; World Bank 2021). In Latin America, the scenario is similar: Brazil is in the first place (seventeenth place worldwide) with 1,389 documents; Chile is in second place (1,189 documents), and Mexico is in third place with 418 documents published. Peru is in sixth place (sixty-seventh worldwide), with 83 documents published from 1960 to 2020 (Fig. 1) (SJR 2020b). However, we can also find documents in other subject categories related to the discipline of architecture, such as “urban studies” and “Geography, Planning, and Development”. However, this quick review in the category “architecture” allows us to have a global vision of Peru’s scarce scientific production situation and the rest of Latin American countries concerning a worldwide context.

Fig. 1
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Source: Author, elaboration with data from SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR 2020a)

Documents published (1996–2020) by South American countries in the “architecture” subject category of SCImago (SJR).

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In 2014, the Peruvian government created the National Superintendence of University Higher Education (SUNEDU) to be responsible for university licensing and supervising the quality of the university education service, establishing research as an essential and mandatory function of the university (MINEDU 2014). The situational diagnosis “II Biennial Report on University Reality in Peru” (2020) describes that publications in indexed journals have doubled, from 813 to 1,643 in the period 2014–2017. The knowledge areas that host the highest percentage of publications in indexed journals are Natural Sciences (36.4%) and Medical Sciences and Health (31.6%), followed by Social Sciences (16.6%), Engineering and Technology (7.1%), Agricultural Sciences (5.5%) and, lastly, Humanities (2.7%) (SUNEDU 2020, p. 96). It is interesting to note that according to the methodology implemented by SUNEDU (based on the OECD classification framework), architecture is in the knowledge area of the Humanities (sub-area of “Art”), and its disciplines are considered “Architectural Design” and “Architecture and Urbanism” (SUNEDU 2020, p. 231). This classification means architecture would be in Peru’s knowledge area with the lowest scientific production. However, in this classification of knowledge areas, should also be considered other possible areas of publication by the architect’s field of action, such as the disciplines of “Urban Studies” (Social Sciences) and “Architectural Engineering” (Engineering and Technology), which makes it very difficult to identify the exact participation of the architect’s scientific activity given the thematic dispersion (Eligio-Triana 2018, p. 4).

Schools of architecture should not be outside of the global interest in generating the dissemination of knowledge through the publication of scientific articles. This worldwide information network allows review of the profession’s graphic, procedural, and experimental advances. It also allows access to the reading of documents resulting from research, a high percentage of which are available through open access journals (Rodríguez-Ahumada 2018, pp. 3–4). Architecture education with an investigative approach provides students with tools to develop critical and complex thinking skills to generate solutions in line with current and future realities (Villadiego Bernal et al. 2019, pp. 313,315). For these reasons, architecture schools are committed to developing mechanisms to exercise research because it is nourished by various other knowledge such as the humanities, the social and the physical sciences, technology, environmental sciences, the creative arts, and the liberal arts (Salazar 2009, p. 67; UNESCO 2017, p. 6).

Currently, there are 37 schools of architecture that belong to universities recognized by SUNEDU. Of this number, 12 schools belong to “public” universities (administered by the Peruvian state), 16 schools belong to “private corporate” universities (administered by private for-profit promoters), and nine schools belong to “private associative” universities (administered by private non-profit promoters) (Table 1) (MINEDU 2014; SIBE 2017). Of the total number of architecture schools (37) in Peru, 14 have their main campus in Lima (the department that contains Peru’s capital). La Libertad is the department with the second largest number of main campuses of architecture schools (4), followed by Arequipa and Junín with three schools, respectively. The main campuses of the architecture schools cover 12 of Peru’s 24 departments; however, coverage is expanding with the establishment of branches. Currently, ten departments in Peru do not have any architecture school, either the main campus or branch campus (Fig. 2). Therefore, this article addresses the following research question: What are the characteristics of the documents, authors, and sources of the indexed publications of Peruvian architecture schools?

Fig. 2
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Source: Author

Location of the architecture schools in Peru.

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Table 1 Architecture Schools recognized by SUNEDU.
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The growing academic interest in scientific production in architecture and the diversity of disciplines that make up the field of action demands the need for studies that make visible the publications and scientific activity of the academic community of the architecture schools. Therefore, this research aims to analyze the scientific production of Peruvian architecture schools based on the documents registered in the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. The relevance of this research lies in the fact that it is one of the first bibliometric studies in the world applied to the academic field of architecture schools. Likewise, there are no national antecedents and periodic reports (by the government or external entities) on scientific production classified by study programs. A bibliometric study on architecture schools of the whole country will allow a national diagnosis to establish strategies to promote scientific production from the undergraduate level and discuss the role of scientific articles in the teaching of architecture.

2 Methodology

A bibliometric study was carried out because these research methods provide quantitative information on published documents, allowing for comparative analyses of scientific productivity through statistical and visualization tools (Rawat and Sood 2021). The Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases were used in this research because they house various Knowledge fields related to architecture, such as engineering, arts and humanities, geography, and social sciences. Likewise, these databases are considered by SUNEDU as having high editorial, visibility, and scientific impact standards to establish an indicator of scientific production (SUNEDU 2020, p. 106).

The study’s methodology was developed in three stages: The first stage consisted of a historical search of documents published in Scopus and WoS until 2020. The search for documents was carried out for each institutional affiliation (Affiliation ID) of the 37 universities with architecture schools recognized by SUNEDU. The documents of authors whose institutional affiliation referred to “school of architecture” or similar denominations such as “department of architecture”, “architecture career”, or “faculty of architecture” were selected. Some authors recorded as affiliation to a research group or center. In this case, the affiliation was considered the architecture school that administered the research group or center. Likewise, it was found that some authors did not make explicit their affiliation with the professional school to which they belonged. For these cases, an exhaustive verification of their affiliation was made by reviewing their respective universities’ institutional faculty web portals.

In the second stage, the data of the documents, sources, and authors were exhaustively analyzed. Concerning the documents, the following data were extracted: document title, year of publication, type of document (article, conference paper, letter, review, note, and editorial), number of citations (cited by), electronic identifier (DOI), and keywords (Author keywords and Indexed keywords). Concerning the sources, the following data were extracted: Source type (Journals, book series, conference proceedings, and trade publications), original language, subject areas, type of access (open access), and scientific impact quartile according to Scimago (SCImago Journal Rank Indicator). The following data were extracted concerning the authors: author’s name, H-Index, and affiliation country. These author data were complemented by verifying their membership and categorization in the national registry of researchers RENACYT (RENACYT 2021).

In the third stage, the data collected were processed using six bibliometric indicators: (1) number of articles published per year, (2) types of articles published per year, (3) characteristics of the documents, (4) trend of the topic documents through the concurrence of keywords, (5) characteristics of the journals indexed, and (6) authors and international collaboration. The study results are visualized through data processing using open-source software such as RawGraphs (Mauri et al. 2017), RStudio (RStudio 2020), and VOSviewer (van Eck and Waltman 2010).

3 Results

3.1 Published documents

A total of 131 documents were found, of which 79 are indexed in Scopus, 30 in WoS, and 22 in both databases. The architecture school with the highest number of documents in both databases is led by the Pontifica Universidad Católica del Perú with 37 documents (22 in Scopus and 15 in WoS), followed by the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas with 36 documents (23 in Scopus and 13 in WoS), and the Universidad de Lima with 21 documents (13 in Scopus and 8 in WoS). The first publication in Scopus was in 2005 by the architecture school of the Universidad Nacional de Piura. In WoS, it was in 2009 by the architecture school of the Universidad Ricardo Palma. The year with the highest number of publications was 2019, in which 41 papers were published (24 in Scopus and 17 in WoS), followed by 2020 when 37 papers were published (23 in Scopus and 14 in WoS). Likewise, the architecture school with the highest number of publications in a calendar year was the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, with ten documents (Scopus) in 2019 (Table 2).

Table 2 Number of documents published per year (Scopus and WoS).
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3.2 Document types

The most published document type in Scopus was “articles”, which represent more than half of the scientific production (56.4%), followed by “conference papers” (25.7%) and “book chapters” (7.9%). Likewise, in the WoS database, “articles” represent a very high percentage (86.5%) compared to other types of documents such as “editorial material” (11.5%) and “review” (1.9%) (Fig. 3). On the other hand, the results show that Spanish and English are the predominant languages in the documents published. About half of the documents were published in English (53.5% in Scopus and 40.4% in WoS) (Table 3). A total of 501 keywords (Author and Index) were used in the published documents. The most frequently used keywords were: Lima (ten occurrences), sustainable development (seven occurrences), housing (five occurrences), architectural design, metropolitan area, restoration, and territory (four occurrences each).

Fig. 3
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Source: Author, elaboration with data from Scopus and Web of Science

Types of documents published by year.

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Table 3 Documents characteristics
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3.3 Articles and journals

Concerning the articles, the total of this document type (102) was published in 49 international scientific journals. The highest percentage of English-language journals come from the United Kingdom (22.4%) and the United States (14.3%), while most of the Spanish-language journals are from Chile (22.4%), Spain (14.3%), and Colombia (8.2%). In addition, of the total number of journals, a large percentage are located in the upper quartiles of Q1 (22.4%) and Q2 (22.4%). Also, about half of the journals (53.1%) are “open access” (Fig. 4). Finally, of the 49 journals analyzed, 25 of them have more than one article published by Peruvian architecture schools. Of this group, seven journals were the most requested by authors: RITA (Spain, 14 articles), ARQ (Chile, 11 articles), Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction (the United States, eight articles), INVI (Chile, eight articles), Eure (Chile, eight articles), Proyecto, Progreso, Arquitectura (Spain, five articles) and Bitácora Urbano Territorial (Colombia, five articles).

Fig. 4
figure 4

Source: Author, elaboration with data from Scopus, Web of Science, and SCImago (SJR 2020a)

Characteristics of Journals.

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3.4 Author affiliations

A total of 190 authors were identified, 120 (63.2%) have a Peruvian university affiliation, and 70 (36.8%) have an international university affiliation (Fig. 5). The countries with the highest percentage of authors with international affiliations were: Spain (13.2%), the United Kingdom (5.8%), Chile (3.2%), the United States (3.2%), and Italy (3.2%). Regarding the first author of the documents, it was found that a very high percentage are Peruvian university affiliations (83.2% in Scopus and 82.7% in WoS).

Fig. 5
figure 5

Source: Author, elaboration with data from Scopus, Web of Science, and Renacyt (RENACYT 2021)

Characteristics of Authors.

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3.5 National Ranking

According to the data found (Scopus and WoS), the national ranking according to the number of publications per architecture school is developed as follows: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (24.2%), Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (23.5%), Universidad de Lima (13.7%), Universidad Ricardo Palma (8.5%), Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería (5.2%), Universidad Nacional de Piura (2.6%), Universidad Científica del Sur (3.3%), Universidad Nacional de San Agustín de Arequipa (3.3%), Universidad Católica de Santa María (2.0%), Universidad Católica San Pablo (2.6%), Universidad Católica Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo (2.6%), Universidad de Piura (2.0), Universidad Privada del Norte (1.3%), Universidad Nacional del Centro del Perú (0.7%), Universidad Peruana Unión (1.3%), Universidad Privada de Tacna (1.3%), Universidad Andina del Cusco (1.3%) y Universidad Nacional Federico Villareal (0.7%) (Table 4).

Table 4 Ranking of scientific production according to documents published in Scopus and WoS (2020)
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4 Discussion

4.1 Scientific production of architecture schools

Of the 37 schools of architecture in Peru recognized by SUNEDU, only 18 have published at least one document in Scopus or Web of Science (WoS) by 2020. Of that number (18), only five schools (13.5%) (UPC, PUCP, URP, UNI, and UNP) published any document before 2014 (the year in which the University Law came into force), and eight schools (21.6%) published for the first time in the last two years (2019–2020). On the other hand, according to the management type, architecture schools of private universities (private corporate and private associative) have published the most significant number of documents (87.6%). In comparison, architecture schools of public universities (public management type) published only 12.4% of the total number of documents. In this context, the data found in the study show that scientific production in Peruvian architecture schools is low since only 131 documents were published in 15 years (2005–2020). The absolute magnitude of this production rate must be evaluated considering the important population size (more than 41 thousand students) of architecture schools nationwide (SIBE 2017).

There is no direct relationship between the operation time of architecture schools and the number of published documents. Architecture schools with the highest scientific production, such as PUCP, UPC, and ULIMA, have been in operation for less than 25 years, while the oldest architecture schools, such as UNCP and UNFV, with more than 50 years of operation, have published fewer documents. Furthermore, in the ranking of scientific production, we can see that the schools of architecture whose main campus is located in the capital of Peru (Lima) occupy the first six places. Only one of them (UNI) is of the public management type. Another aspect to highlight is that the first three places (PUCP, UPC, and ULIMA) have published more than half (61.4%) of the total number of publications at the national level (Table 4). Although this ranking offers us a first national diagnosis through the number of documents published, we must also consider the relationship between scientific production and its academic population. There is no open access updated data on the number of teachers each architecture school has. However, data from institutional web portals refer to a range of 500–1,000 students in the architecture schools that occupy the first seven positions, except UPC (more than four thousand students) and URP (m two thousand students). If the ratio of publications and the students number were to be considered, the ranking of scientific production would change in the top positions (Table 4, see last column “Ranking S/T”).

On the other hand, according to the number of documents published per year, there has been growth since 2014. This growth is due to the entry into force of the new University Law since this growth also occurred in other knowledge disciplines at the national level (SUNEDU 2020, p. 93). However, the figures also reflect an irregularity in scientific production. Since the first time they published, PUCP (2012) and ULIMA (2017) reflect a continuous rhythm of publications of, on average, two papers per year; likewise, UPC (since 2014) reflects continuity in its scientific production. Ten other schools (including three published documents before 2014) present long periods (three to five years) of null scientific production (Table 2). These interruptions may mean that the first publications made by these architecture schools were made on the authors’ initiative and not as a result of an institutional plan of publications in journals of high scientific impact.

The period 2019–2020 has the highest scientific production in both databases. In the case of Scopus, of the 101 documents published, 47 (46.5%) were from the last two years. In the case of WoS, of the 52 documents published, 31 (59.6%) were produced in 2019–2020. In addition to this, six architecture schools began to publish documents in the last two years, evidence of a growing interest in publications on scientific bases in architectural knowledge. These numbers found in recent years are encouraging, and it is expected that these numbers may increase in the coming years.

4.2 Journals characteristics

One of the primary document characteristics is that about half (53.5% in Scopus and 40.4% in WoS) have been published in English. This indicator is important because publishing documents in international English language journals allow for greater visibility in the scientific world and increased citation options. It is a significant indicator since it reflects the rigorousness of researchers and the scientific impact expected by the published documents. However, this percentage of English publications may also be caused by the obligation to publish in international journals due to the absence of national indexed journals. For example, 80% of the specialized Scopus-indexed journals are published in English (Niño-Puello 2013, p. 247). Thus, it is essential to point out that no journals indexed in Scopus or WoS in Peru belong to the architecture field, unlike other countries in the Latin American region. For example, in the architecture subject category of Scopus, countries such as Chile (five journals) and Brazil (two journals) lead in the number of indexed journals (SJR 2020c). Although publishing papers in international journals is essential, producing indexed national journals is a pending task. They can be the initial platform for the first publications of students or young researchers and encourage the production of scientific articles in architecture schools.

4.3 Research topic characteristics

The analysis of co-occurrence networks (Fig. 6) through the documents keywords published in Scopus reveals three characteristics of research topics: (1) The dominance of Lima (capital of Peru) as a research location. Lima is one of the most frequent keywords, showing that a large percentage of the research is located in the Peruvian capital. This preference may be due to the national centralism of university education that exists in the country. Its centralism is reflected in the architecture schools in Lima that have more significant economic and human resources to develop basic and applied research (access to databases, specialized libraries, research professors, infrastructure, and equipment). It is interesting to note that, in addition to Lima, the other city that appears in the keywords of the documents is Arequipa. This presence is justified since Arequipa is the second department with the second largest number of architecture schools (three) in the national ranking of scientific production. (2) The high frequency of keywords such as energy efficiency, seismology, restoration, structural analysis, bioclimatic architecture, and acoustics shows that the research line related to technology and construction has the highest scientific production. This relation may be due to the research type conducted in this subfield of knowledge, which is close to engineering specialties where the habit of writing scientific articles is more frequent and historical. (3) Sustainable development is the main interest of the topics that address studies on climate change, territory, urbanism, regional planning, and housing. In this sustainable centrality, there is a growing interest in publishing on architectural design, which, due to its multidisciplinary nature, can integrate urban studies (social sciences), architectural design (humanities, arts, design), and construction (engineering) (Eligio-Triana 2019, p. 3).

Fig. 6
figure 6

Source: Author, elaboration with data from Scopus

Visualization of the keywords co-occurrence network of documents published in Scopus.

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4.4 Author characteristics

The results show a preponderance of Peruvian authors as first authors in the publications (more than 80%). At the same time, an essential percentage of authors from international countries (37%) collaborate in developing research in Peruvian architecture schools. International collaboration in publications is beneficial for increasing the potential for publication in high-impact journals. Therefore, it is crucial to promote joint research with foreign universities and international research centers so that students and professors can participate in international research projects with opportunities to access funding from national and international organizations (Millones-Gomez et al. 2021, pp. 3,10).

The H-index is a bibliometric indicator that measures the productivity and impact of publications by researchers. This indicator measures the relationship between the number of documents published and the number of citations received for the document. The average H-index of the authors found in the study is 1.94, which is still a very low indicator. This low average may be because more than 50% of the publications were made in the last three years and will probably be considered references in subsequent years. However, it is essential to note that the documents produced with international collaboration had more citations, which directly benefited the authors’ H-index.

Of the total number of national authors (120), only about a third (36) are registered in RENACYT (Fig. 5). This group is the “National Scientific, Technological and Technological Innovation Registry” of natural persons, Peruvian or foreign, who carry out science, technology, and innovation activities in Peru (RENACYT 2021). To be registered in RENACYT, researchers must meet academic degrees (master’s and doctorate) and regularity in indexed publications. The low proportion of authors registered in RENACYT means there is still a lack of research teacher training in architecture schools. Some pending tasks in architecture schools are training in research methodologies, implementation of full-time research professors, formation of specialized research groups, strategies for international collaboration networks, student scientific societies, dissemination of databases and bibliographic managers, and reading scientific articles from undergraduate. The latter is also perceived in other disciplines since students only relate to these sources at the end of their careers or when pursuing postgraduate studies due to poor management of high-impact bibliographic databases (Barrutia Barreto et al. 2020, pp. 5–9).

4.5 Limitations

Among the limitations of this study, it is worth mentioning that there are no national or international scientific articles that address the scientific production of architecture schools. Only one international study was found in Spain, but it is in the format of a lengthy technical report (Durán 2021). Other similar studies were also found but focused on teaching architects and specific sub-disciplines of architecture (Durán Álvarez 2016; López-Chao and Amado Lorenzo 2020, 2021; Rodríguez et al. 2020). This lack of precedents implied developing research based on references to other studies developed in other disciplines. In addition, three universities do not have institutional affiliation in both databases (Scopus and WoS), so the information on their publications is unknown.

5 Conclusion

Of the 37 schools of architecture that exist in the Peruvian university system, about half (18) published at least one document in the scientific databases Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) until 2020. Scientific articles are the most published documents, and slightly more than half were published in English. It is concluded that the scientific production of Peruvian architecture schools is low, recent, and heterogeneous.

  1. 1)

    It is low because the rate of scientific production is an average of two papers per year, considering that each architecture school has a considerable student population (around 500–1,000); some schools even have more than five thousand students. In addition, only 131 documents were published in 15 years (2005–2020).

  2. 2)

    It is recent because the first publication was made less than 15 years ago (2005); however, in many architecture schools, there were long periods (about four years) of no scientific publication. In addition, of the total number of authors with Peruvian affiliation (120), only 36 are registered in RENACYT. This low number reflects the recent specialization of research professors.

  3. 3)

    It is heterogeneous because there is a clear differentiation of scientific production by management type (public or private) and location of the universities. The architecture schools whose main campus is located in Lima occupy the first six positions in the scientific production ranking; of these, only one is a public university.

The importance of conducting bibliometric studies to evaluate the scientific production of Peruvian architecture schools allows us to know in detail the characteristics of the publications made by researchers in these institutions. Therefore, implementing an Observatory of Peruvian Schools of Architecture is recommended. This initiative would make it possible to continue carrying out this type of study periodically, offering a biannual diagnosis of the scientific production of the country’s architecture schools. In addition to collecting other types of relevant data for a situational diagnosis of the university reality of architecture schools such as the number of patents, percentage of PhDs, published books, research centers, the ratio of students and full-time teachers, academic exchanges, graduate programs, lines of research and scientific societies. In addition, it is suggested to rethink the degree modalities in our architecture schools, which is generally through the development of architectural projects (Final Degree Project). It is necessary to discuss implementing strategies such as “thesis in scientific article format” and “thesis by patents”, which are already being developed in other university careers in Peru. A comprehensive evaluation of all these academic aspects would allow us to establish and implement strategies to promote student formative research and research faculty specialization in the Peruvian architecture schools.