Intelligent Educational Evaluation of Research Performance between Digital Library and Open Government Data

Tao-Ming Cheng,Hsing-Yu Hou

doi:10.3390/app12020791

Abstract

This study evaluates institutional research performance in benchmark technological universities in Taiwan through intelligent research databases (SciVal) in digital libraries with Ministry of Education open data to explore the performance of research indicators and the research trend of topic clusters to ascertain accountability for decision makers. The research performance of eight benchmark technological universities in Taiwan is compared in this study. In addition, the trends in research topics in the top 10% of journals are explored. Descriptive statistics, correlation, ANOVA, and the Boston Consulting Group matrix were used in this study. Research personnel, publications, productivity, total citations, number of international collaborations, and academic research income in 2018 significantly positively correlated with each other. From 719 records of research topics, topic clusters and school types are the significant factors in research outputs. Biosensors, electrodes, and voltammetry are the leading topic clusters in the research trend. The topic cluster of decision-making, fuzzy sets, and models has the best growth rate in the SciVal results. This analysis provides useful insights to policymakers to improve institutional administration and research resource allocation.

Highlights

Accountability in higher education plays an important role in evaluating production, and national rankings are part of performance-based accountability [1,2]
The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings is more focused on reputation surveys, while the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) emphasizes the outcome of outstanding researchers; the ranking applies indicators in teaching, research, citations, international outlook, and industry income to cover all university activities [6]
The outcomes of research indicators, including the number of publications, productivity, number of citations of the superior subject, and research income, as well as the international outlook indicator that consisted of the proportion of publications with international collaboration were presented as follows

Summary

Introduction

Accountability in higher education plays an important role in evaluating production, and national rankings are part of performance-based accountability [1,2]. The QS World University Rankings is more focused on reputation surveys, while the ARWU emphasizes the outcome of outstanding researchers; the ranking applies indicators in teaching (the learning environment), research (volume, income, and reputation), citations (research influence), international outlook (staff, students, and research), and industry income (research from industry and knowledge transfer) to cover all university activities [6]. The Times’ methodology offers a sharper picture of a university’s capabilities and is praised for having a new, improved ranking methodology since 2010. It is described as one of the most influential international university rankings [7,8,9]. Their data are trusted by governments and institutions and are beneficial to parents and students in deciding upon which university to choose

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion