The literature on gender differences in research performance seems to suggest a gap between men and women, where the former outperform the latter. Whether one agrees with the different factors proposed to explain the phenomenon, it is worthwhile to verify if comparing the performance within each...

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...

The analysis of research collaboration by field is traditionally conducted beginning with the classification of the publications from the context of interest. In this work we propose an alternative approach based on the classification of the authors by field. The proposed method is more precise...

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...

The practice of collaboration, and particularly international collaboration, is becoming ever more widespread in scientific research, and is likewise receiving greater interest and stimulus from policy-makers. However, the relation between research performance and degree of internationalization...

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...

Accurate measurement of research productivity should take account of both the number of co-authors of every scientific work and of the different contributions of the individuals. For researchers in the life sciences, common practice is to indicate such contributions through position in the...

The debate on the role of women in the academic world has focused on various phenomena that could be at the root of the gender gap seen in many nations. However, in spite of the ever more collaborative character of scientific research, the issue of gender aspects in research collaborations has...

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...