Abstract
This study investigates the research performance of the Iraqi public and private universities using the Scopus citation database. The investigation consists of three stages. The first stage includes the registration of these universities in the database. The second represents the process of merging the multiple accounts of each university. The two stages have been completed within one year (from start to end of 2017), which result in a significant improvement in the research performance, in term of number of published articles (Pu), number of citations (C) and h index. Analysis of the improved h index obtained from the Scopus site, reveals a clear bias towards large universities, due to neglecting the number of researchers (NS) in calculating the h index. In the third stage, two new empirical equations are suggested for measuring research performance of universities. The first proposed equation predicts a modified h index as a function of Pu, C, and NS and implements to Iraqi universities and selected universities from other countries. The second proposed equation is a combination of three sub-indicators, namely: citations per article, articles per researcher, and percentage of non-cited articles. Discussion of results indicates that the developed equations eliminate the bias of the large universities over the small ones and highlight some useful recommendations for the universities to enhance their ranking in scientific performance.
References
Babic, D., Kutlac, D., Zivkovic, L., Strbac, D., & Semencenko, D. (2015). Evaluation of the quality of scientific performance of the selected countries of Southeast Europe. Scientometrics, 106(405), 434. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1649-8.
Bador, P., & Lafouge, Th. (2010). Comparative analysis between impact factor and h-index for pharmacology and psychiatry journals. Scientometrics, 84, 65–79. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0058-2.
Bornmann, L., & Marx, W. (2011). The h index as a research performance indicator. European Science Editing., 37(3), 77–80.
Bornmann, L., Mutz, R., Hug, S. E., & Daniel, H. (2011). A multilevel meta-analysis of studies reporting correlations between the h index and 37 different h index variants. Journal of Informetrics, 5, 346–359. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2011.01.006.
Buela-Casal, G., Gutierrez-Martinez, O., Bermudez-Sanchez, M. P., & Vadillo-Munoz, O. (2007). Comparative study of international academic rankings of universities. Scientometrics, 71(3), 349–365. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1653-8.
Carbó-Dorca, R. (2010). A monodimensional scientific performance measure: The h index, can be substituted by simple multidimensional descriptors? Journal of Mathematical and Chemistry, 47, 548–550. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10910-009-9573-x.
Csajbok, E., Berhidi, A., Vasas, L., & Schubert, A. (2007). Hirsch-index for countries based on essential science indicators data. Scientometrics, 73, 91. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1859-9.
Demetrescu, C., Finocchi, I., Ribichini, A., & Schaerf, M. (2020). On bibliometrics in academic promotions: A case study in computer science and engineering in Italy. Scientometrics, 124, 2207–2228. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03548-9.
Garcia-Perez, M. A. (2008). On some new bibliometric applications of statistics related to the h-index. Scientometrics, 77(1), 187–196. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1989-0.
Garcia-Perez, M. A. (2009). A multidimensional extension to Hirsch’s h-index. Scientometrics, 81(3), 779–785.
Gilyarevskii, R. S. (2014). Publication activity as an indicator of scientific performance. Scientific and Technical Information Processing, 41, 170–177. https://doi.org/10.3103/S0147688214030071.
Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(46), 16569–16572.
Hirsch, J. E. (2007). Does the h index have predictive power? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A., 104: 19193. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0707962104.
Lazaridis, Th. (2010). Ranking university departments using the mean h-index. Scientometrics, 82, 211–216. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0048-4.
Lehmann, S., Jackson, A. D., & Lautrup, B. E. (2008). A quantitative analysis of indicators of scientific performance. Scientometrics, 76, 369–390. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1868-8.
Prathap, G. (2010). Is there a place for a mock h-index? Scientometrics, 84, 153–165. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0066-2.
Schubert, A. (2015). Rescaling the h-index. Scientometrics, 102, 1647–1653. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1373-9.
Schubert, A., & Glanzel, W. (2007). A systematic analysis of Hirsch-type indices for journals. Journal of Informetrics, 1, 179–184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2006.12.002.
Van Raan, A. F. J. (2006). Statistical properties of bibliometric indicators: Research group indicator distributions and correlations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(3), 408–430.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Abdul-Majeed, G., Mahmood, W. & Namer, N.S.M. Measuring research performance of Iraqi universities using Scopus data. Scientometrics 126, 2349–2363 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03866-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03866-6