The current work proposes an application of DEA methodology for measurement of technical and allocative efficiency of university research activity. The analysis is based on bibliometric data from the Italian university system for the five-year period 2004–2008. Technical and allocative...

Unlike competitive higher education systems, non-competitive systems show relatively uniform distributions of top researchers and low performers among universities. In this study, we examine the impact of unproductive and top faculty members on overall research performance of the university they...

In this work we investigate the sensitivity of individual researchers’ productivity rankings to the time of citation observation. The analysis is based on observation of research products for the 2001–2003 triennium for all research staff of Italian universities in the hard sciences, with...

With the passage of more time from the original date of publication, the measure of the impact of scientific works using subsequent citation counts becomes more accurate. However the measurement of individual and organizational research productivity should ideally refer to a period with closing...

Higher education systems in competitive environments generally present top universities, that are able to attract top scientists, top students and public and private financing, with notable socio-economic benefits in their region. The same does not hold true for non-competitive systems. In this...

Because of the variations in citation behavior across research fields, appropriate standardization must be applied as part of any bibliometric analysis of the productivity of individual scientists and research organizations. Such standardization involves scaling by some factor that characterizes...

The evaluation of performance at the individual level is of fundamental importance in informing management decisions. The literature provides various indicators and types of measures, however a problem that is still unresolved and little addressed is how to compare the performance of researchers...

One of the critical issues in bibliometric research assessments is the time required to achieve maturity in citations. Citation counts can be considered a reliable proxy of the real impact of a work only if they are observed after sufficient time has passed from publication date. In the present...

Ever more frequently, governments have decided to implement policy measures intended to foster and reward excellence in scientific research. This is in fact the intended purpose of national research assessment exercises. These are typically based on the analysis of the quality of the best...

Over the past decade, national research evaluation exercises, traditionally conducted using the peer review method, have begun opening to bibliometric indicators. The citations received by a publication are assumed as proxy for its quality, but they require standardization prior to use in...