Abstract
This paper presents a methodology for measuring the technical efficiency of research activities. It is based on the application of data envelopment analysis to bibliometric data on the Italian university system. For that purpose, different input values (research personnel by level and extra funding) and output values (quantity, quality and level of contribution to actual scientific publications) are considered. Our study aims at overcoming some of the limitations connected to the methodologies that have so far been proposed in the literature, in particular by surveying the scientific production of universities by authors’ name.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abbott, M., Doucouliagos, C. (2003). The efficiency of Australian universities: A data envelopment analysis. Economics of Education Review, 22(1): 89–97.
Abramo, G. (2006). Non è tutto oro quello che luccica, http://www.lavoce.info/news/view.php?id=&cms_pk=2179
Abramo, G., Pugini, F. (2004). Un’analisi della produttività scientifica e brevettuale delle università italiane. Laboratory for Studies of Research and Technology Transfer — Working Paper (www.disp.uniroma2.it/laboratoriortt/Sito%20inglese/Results.html)
Abramo, G., Pugini, F. (2005). L’attività di licensing delle università italiane: un’indagine empirica. Economia e Politica Industriale, XXXII(3): 43–60.
Adams, J. D., Griliches, Z. (2000). Research productivity in a system of universities, in: D. Encaoua, B. H. Hall, H. Laisney, J. Mairesse (Eds). The Economics and Econometrics of Innovation, Kluwer Academic Publisher.
Agrawal, A., Henderson, R. (2002). Putting Patents in Context: exploring knowledge transfer from MIT. Management Science, 48(1): 44–60.
Athanassopoulos, A. D., Shale, E. (1997). Assessing the comparative efficiency of higher education institutions in the UK by means of data envelopment analysis. Education Economics, 5: 117–134.
Baek, Y. (2006). Publishing Productivity of US Academic Scientists and Engineers: An Empirical Examination through Data Envelopment Analysis. “New Frontiers In Evaluation” Conference, Vienna, April 2006.
Banker, R. D., Charnes, A., Cooper, W. W. (1984). Some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis. Management Science, 30(9): 1078–1092.
Bonaccorsi, A. (2003). Il sistema della ricerca pubblica in Italia. Franco Angeli ed., Bologna-Italy.
Bonaccorsi, A., Daraio, C. (2003). A robust nonparametric approach to the analysis of scientific productivity. Research Evaluation, 12(1): 47–69.
Bonaccorsi, A., Daraio, C., Simar, L. (2006). Advanced indicators of productivity of universities. An application of robust nonparametric methods to Italian data. Scientometrics, 66(2): 389–410.
Bordons, M., Morillo, F., Fernández, M. T., Gómez, I. (2003). One step further in the production of bibliometric indicators at the micro level: Differences by gender and professional category of scientists. Scientometrics, 57(2) 159–173.
Charnes, A., Cooper, W. W., Rhodes, E. (1978). Measuring the efficiency of decision making units. European Journal of Operational Research, 2: 429–444.
Cohen, W. M., Nelson, R. R., Walsh, J. P. (2002). Links and impacts: the influence of public research on industrial R&D. Management Science, 48(1): 1–23.
Colyvas, J., Crow, M., Gelijns, A., Mazzoleni, R., Nelson, R. R., Rosenberg, N., Sampat, B. N. (2002). How do University inventions get into practice?. Management Science, 48(1): 61–72.
CRUI-Association of The Deans of The Italian Universities (2002). La Ricerca Scientifica Nelle Università Italiane. Una Prima Analisi Delle Citazioni Della Banca Dati Isi.
Flegg, A. T., Allen, D. O., Field, K., Thurlow, T. W. (2004). Measuring the efficiency of British Universities: A multi-period data envelopment analysis. Education Economics, 12(3): 231–249.
Gauffriau, M., Larsen, P. O. (2005). Counting methods are decisive for rankings based on publication and citation studies. Scientometrics, 64(1): 85–93.
Horrobin, D. F. (1990). The philosophical basis of peer review and the suppression of innovation. Journal of the American Medical Association, 263: 1438–1441.
Lach, S., Schankerman, M. (2003). Incentives and Invention in Universities. NBER working paper #9727.
MacRoberts, M. H., MacRoberts, B. R. (1996). Problems of citation analysis. Scientometrics, 36: 435–444
Moed, H. F., (2002). The impact-factors debate: the ISI’s uses and limits. Nature, 415: 731–732.
Moxham, H., Anderson, J. (1992). Peer review. A view from the inside. Science and Technology Policy, 7–15.
NSB — National Science Board (2004), Science and Engineering Indicators.
OECD (2003), Turning Science into Business: Patenting and Licensing at Public Research Organizations.
Prpic, K. (1996). Characteristics and determinants of eminent scientist’ productivity. Scientometrics, 36: 185–206.
RAE — Research Assessment Methodology (2001), www.rae.ac.uk
Scheel, H. (2000). EMS: Efficiency Measurement System. A Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Software. http://www.wiso.uni-dortmund.de/lsfg/or/scheel/ems
Siegel, D. S., Waldman, D. A., Link, A. N. (2003). Assessing the impact of organizational practices on the relative productivity of university technology transfer offices: an exploratory study. Research Policy, 32: 27–48.
Torvik, V. I., Weeber, M., Swanson, D. R., Smalheiser, N. R. (2005). A probabilistic similarity metric for medline records: A model for author name disambiguation. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 56(2) 140–158.
Van Raan, A. F. J. (2005). Fatal attraction: Conceptual and methodological problems in the ranking of universities by bibliometric methods. Scientometrics, 62(1): 133–143.
VSNU (2002). Quality Assessment of Research. Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Research in the Netherlands. Utrecht: VSNU. Disponibile su: www.cwts.nl
Wooding, S., Wilcox-Jay, K., Lewison, G., Grant, J. (2006). Co-author inclusion: A novel recursive algorithmic method for dealingwith homonyms in bibliometric analysis. Scientometrics, 66(1) 11–21.
Worthington, A. C., Lee, B. L. (2005). Efficiency, Technology and Productivity Change in Australian Universities, 1998–2003, University of Wollongong — Working Paper.
Zainab, A. N. (1999). Personal, academic and departmental correlates of research productivity: a review of literature. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 4(2): 73–110.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Abramo, G., D’Angelo, C.A. & Pugini, F. The measurement of Italian universities’ research productivity by a non parametric-bibliometric methodology. Scientometrics 76, 225–244 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1942-2
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1942-2