arXiv subjects

Giovanni Abramo

Publications and source records attributed to Giovanni Abramo.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

A robust benchmark for the h- and g-indexes

The use Hirsch's h-index as a joint proxy of the impact and productivity of a scientist's research work continues to gain ground, accompanied by the efforts of bibliometrists to resolve some of its critical issues, through the application of a number of more or less sophisticated variants. However, the literature does not reveal any appreciable attempt to overcome the objective problems of measuring h-indexes on a large scale, for purposes of comparative evaluation. Scientists may succeed in calculating their own h-indexes but, being unable to compare them to those of their peers, they are unable to obtain truly useful indications of their individual research performance. This study proposes to overcome this gap, measuring the h- and Egghe's g-indexes of all Italian university researchers in the hard sciences, over a 5-year window. Descriptive statistics are provided concerning all of the 165 subject fields examined, offering robust benchmarks for those who wish to compare their individual performance to those of their colleagues in the same subject field.

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arXiv2018

University-industry research collaboration: a model to assess university capability

Scholars and policy makers recognize that collaboration between industry and the public research institutions is a necessity for innovation and national economic development. This work presents an econometric model which expresses the university capability for collaboration with industry as a function of size, location and research quality. The field of observation is made of the census of 2001-2003 scientific articles in the hard sciences, co-authored by universities and private enterprises located in Italy. The analysis shows that research quality of universities has an impact higher than geographic distance on the capability for collaborating with industry. The model proposed and the measures that descend from it are suited for use at various levels of administration, to assist in realizing the "third role" of universities: the contribution to socio-economic development through public to private technology transfer.

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arXiv2018

Revisiting size effects in higher education research productivity

The potential occurrence of variable returns to size in research activity is a factor to be considered in choices about the size of research organizations and also in the planning of national research assessment exercises, so as to avoid favoring those organizations that would benefit from such occurrence. The aim of the current work is to improve on weaknesses in past inquiries concerning returns to size through application of a research productivity measurement methodology that is more accurate and robust. The method involves field-standardized measurements that are free of the typical distortions of aggregate measurement by discipline or organization. The analysis is conducted for 183 hard science fields in all 77 Italian universities (time period 2004-2008) and allows detection of potential differences by field.

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arXiv2018

The role of information asymmetry in the market for university-industry research collaboration

This study concerns the market for research collaboration between industry and universities. It presents an analysis of the population of all Italian university-industry collaborations that resulted in at least one international scientific publication between 2001 and 2003. Using spatial and bibliometric analysis relating to scientific output of university researchers, the study shows the importance of geographic proximity in companies' choices of university partner. The analysis also reveals inefficiency in the market: in a large proportion of cases private companies could have chosen more qualified research partners in universities located closer to the place of business.

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arXiv2018

Assessing public-private research collaboration: is it possible to compare university performance?

It is widely recognized that collaboration between the public and private research sectors should be stimulated and supported, as a means of favoring innovation and regional development. This work takes a bibliometric approach, based on co-authorship of scientific publications, to propose a model for comparative measurement of the performance of public research institutions in collaboration with the domestic industry collaboration with the private sector. The model relies on an identification and disambiguation algorithm developed by the authors to link each publication to its real authors. An example of application of the model is given, for the case of the academic system and private enterprises in Italy. The study demonstrates that for each scientific discipline and each national administrative region, it is possible to measure the performance of individual universities in both intra-regional and extra-regional collaboration, normalized with respect to advantages of location. Such results may be useful in informing regional policies and merit-based public funding of research organizations.

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arXiv2018

National research assessment exercises: a measure of the distortion of performance rankings when labor input is treated as uniform

Measuring the efficiency of scientific research activity presents critical methodological aspects, many of which have not been sufficiently studied. Although many studies have assessed the relation between quality and research productivity and academic rank, not much is known about the extent of distortion in national university performance rankings when academic rank and the other labor factors are not considered as a factor of normalization. This work presents a comparative analysis that aims to quantify the sensitivity of bibliometric rankings to the choice of input, with input considered as only the number of researchers on staff, or alternatively where their cost is also considered. The field of observation consists of all 69 Italian universities active in the hard sciences. Performance measures are based on the 81,000 publications produced during the 2004-2006 triennium by all 34,000 research staff, with analysis carried out at the level of individual disciplines, 187 in total. The effect of the switch from labor to cost seems to be minimal except for a few outliers.

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arXiv2018

Citations versus journal impact factor as proxy of quality: Could the latter ever be preferable?

In recent years bibliometricians have paid increasing attention to research evaluation methodological problems, among these being the choice of the most appropriate indicators for evaluating quality of scientific publications, and thus for evaluating the work of single scientists, research groups and entire organizations. Much literature has been devoted to analyzing the robustness of various indicators, and many works warn against the risks of using easily available and relatively simple proxies, such as journal impact factor. The present work continues this line of research, examining whether it is valid that the use of the impact factor should always be avoided in favour of citations, or whether the use of impact factor could be acceptable, even preferable, in certain circumstances. The evaluation was conducted by observing all scientific publications in the hard sciences by Italian universities, for the period 2004-2007. Performance sensitivity analyses were conducted with changing indicators of quality and years of observation.

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arXiv2018

Peer review research assessment: a sensitivity analysis of performance rankings to the share of research product evaluated

In national research assessment exercises that take the peer review approach, research organizations are evaluated on the basis of a subset of their scientific production. The dimension of the subset varies from nation to nation but is typically set as a proportional function of the number of researchers employed at each research organization. However, scientific fertility varies from discipline to discipline, meaning that the representativeness of such a subset also varies according to discipline. The rankings resulting from the assessments could be quite sensitive to the size of the share of articles selected for evaluation. The current work examines this issue, developing empirical evidence of variations in ranking due changes in the dimension of the subset of products evaluated. The field of observation is represented by the scientific production from the hard sciences of the entire Italian university system, from 2001 to 2003.

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arXiv2018

The relationship between scientists' research performance and the degree of internationalization of their research

Policy makers, at various levels of governance, generally encourage the development of research collaboration. However the underlying determinants of collaboration are not completely clear. In particular, the literature lacks studies that, taking the individual researcher as the unit of analysis, attempt to understand if and to what extent the researcher's scientific performance might impact on his/her degree of collaboration with foreign colleagues. The current work examines the international collaborations of Italian university researchers for the period 2001-2005, and puts them in relation to each individual's research performance. The results of the investigation, which assumes co-authorship as proxy of research collaboration, show that both research productivity and average quality of output have positive effects on the degree of international collaboration achieved by a scientist.

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arXiv2018

National-scale research performance assessment at the individual level

There is an evident and rapid trend towards the adoption of evaluation exercises for national research systems for purposes, among others, of improving allocative efficiency in public funding of individual institutions. However the desired macroeconomic aims could be compromised if internal redistribution of government resources within each research institution does not follow a consistent logic: the intended effects of national evaluation systems can result only if a "funds for quality" rule is followed at all levels of decision-making. The objective of this study is to propose a bibliometric methodology for: i) large-scale comparative evaluation of research performance by individual scientists, research groups and departments within research institution, to inform selective funding allocations, and ii) assessment of strengths and weaknesses by field of research, to inform strategic planning and control. The proposed methodology has been applied to the hard science disciplines of the Italian university research system for the period 2004-2006.

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arXiv2018

A national-scale cross-time analysis of university research performance

Research policies in the more developed nations are ever more oriented towards the introduction of productivity incentives and competition mechanisms intended to increase efficiency in research institutions. Assessments of the effects of these policy interventions on public research activity often neglect the normal, inherent variation in the performance of research institutions over time. In this work, we propose a cross-time bibliometric analysis of research performance by all Italian universities in two consecutive periods (2001-2003 and 2004-2008) not affected by national policy interventions. Findings show that productivity and impact increased at the level of individual scientists. At the level of university, significant variation in the rank was observed.

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arXiv2018

Evaluating research: from informed peer review to bibliometrics

National research assessment exercises are becoming regular events in ever more countries. The present work contrasts the peer-review and bibliometrics approaches in the conduct of these exercises. The comparison is conducted in terms of the essential parameters of any measurement system: accuracy, robustness, validity, functionality, time and costs. Empirical evidence shows that for the natural and formal sciences, the bibliometric methodology is by far preferable to peer-review. Setting up national databases of publications by individual authors, derived from Web of Science or Scopus databases, would allow much better, cheaper and more frequent national research assessments.

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arXiv2018

The dangers of performance-based research funding in non-competitive higher education systems

An increasing number of nations allocate public funds to research institutions on the basis of rankings obtained from national evaluation exercises. Therefore, in non-competitive higher education systems where top scientists are dispersed among all the universities, rather than concentrated among a few, there is a high risk of penalizing those top scientists who work in lower-performance universities. Using a five-year bibliometric analysis conducted on all Italian universities active in the hard sciences from 2004-2008, this work analyzes the distribution of publications and relevant citations by scientists within the universities, measures the research performance of individual scientists, quantifies the intensity of concentration of top scientists at each university, provides performance rankings for the universities, and indicates the effects of selective funding on the top scientists of low-ranked universities.

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arXiv2018

National research assessment exercises: the effects of changing the rules of the game during the game

National research evaluation exercises provide a comparative measure of research performance of the nation's institutions, and as such represent a tool for stimulating research productivity, particularly if the results are used to inform selective funding by government. While a school of thought welcomes frequent changes in evaluation criteria in order to prevent the subjects evaluated from adopting opportunistic behaviors, it is evident that the "rules of the game" should above all be functional towards policy objectives, and therefore be known with adequate forewarning prior to the evaluation period. Otherwise, the risk is that policy-makers will find themselves faced by a dilemma: should they reward universities that responded best to the criteria in effect at the outset of the observation period or those that result as best according to rules that emerged during or after the observation period? This study verifies if and to what extent some universities are penalized instead of rewarded for good behavior, in pursuit of the objectives of the "known" rules of the game, by comparing the research performances of Italian universities for the period of the nation's next evaluation exercise (2004-2008): first as measured according to criteria available at the outset of the period and next according to those announced at the end of the period.

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arXiv2018

The field-standardized average impact of national research systems compared to world average: the case of Italy

The study presents a time-series analysis of field-standardized average impact of Italian research compared to the world average. The approach is purely bibliometric, based on census of the full scientific production from all Italian public research organizations active in 2001-2006 (hard sciences only). The analysis is conducted both at sectorial level (aggregated, by scientific discipline and for single fields within disciplines) and at organizational level (by type of organization and for single organizations). The essence of the methodology should be replicable in all other national contexts. Its offers support to policy-makers and administrators for strategic analysis aimed at identifying strengths and weaknesses of national research systems and institutions.

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arXiv2018

Research productivity: are higher academic ranks more productive than lower ones?

This work analyses the links between individual research performance and academic rank. A typical bibliometric methodology is used to study the performance of all Italian university researchers active in the hard sciences, for the period 2004-2008. The objective is to characterize the performance of the ranks of full, associate and assistant professors, along various dimensions, in order to verify the existence of performance differences among the ranks in general and for single disciplines.

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arXiv2018

National research assessment exercises: a comparison of peer review and bibliometrics rankings

Development of bibliometric techniques has reached such a level as to suggest their integration or total substitution for classic peer review in the national research assessment exercises, as far as the hard sciences are concerned. In this work we compare rankings lists of universities captured by the first Italian evaluation exercise, through peer review, with the results of bibliometric simulations. The comparison shows the great differences between peer review and bibliometric rankings for excellence and productivity.

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arXiv2018

Are researchers that collaborate more at the international level top performers? An investigation on the Italian university system

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 at the level of single researchers still presents unresolved questions. The present work, through a bibliometric analysis of the entire Italian university population working in the hard sciences over the period 2001-2005, seeks to answer some of these questions. The results show that the researchers with top performance with respect to their national colleagues are also those who collaborate more abroad, but that the reverse is not always true. Also, interesting differences emerge at the sectorial level. Finally, the effect of the nation involved in the international partnership plays a role that should not be ignored.

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