Scientific output scales with resources. A comparison of US and European universities.

Benedetto Lepori,Antonietta Mira,Aldo Geuna,Wolfgang Glanzel

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0223415

Benedetto Lepori, Antonietta Mira + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223415

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Abstract

By using a comprehensive dataset of US and European universities, we demonstrate super-linear scaling between university revenues and their volume of publications and (field-normalized) citations. We show that this relationship holds both in the US and in Europe. In terms of resources, our data show that three characteristics differentiate the US system: (1) a significantly higher level of resources for the entire system, (2) a clearer distinction between education-oriented institutions and doctoral universities and (3) a higher concentration of resources among doctoral universities. Accordingly, a group of US universities receive a much larger amount of resources and have a far higher number of publications and citations when compared to their European counterparts. These results demonstrate empirically that international rankings are by and large richness measures and, therefore, can be interpreted only by introducing a measure of resources. Implications for public policies and institutional evaluation are finally discussed.

Highlights

During the last thirty or so years, public funding of research institutions and of universities [1] has significantly changed, moving from a largely historical allocation based on the presumption that society will reap the benefit of science [2] to an evaluative culture where resources are increasingly distributed based on some measure of performance [3]
The focus of this paper is to examine the relationship between resources and standard bibliometric indicators that are widely used to compare universities for their ‘excellence’
Super-linear scaling implies that bibliometric indicators increase more rapidly than revenues and so-called scale-free indicators, such as MNCS, become size-dependent [21]

Summary

Introduction

During the last thirty or so years, public funding of research institutions and of universities [1] has significantly changed, moving from a largely historical allocation based on the presumption that society will reap the benefit of science [2] to an evaluative culture where resources are increasingly distributed based on some measure of performance [3] These changes signal a move from a conception of science as a ‘public good’ [4] to a conception of science as a commodity whose supply is governed by market mechanisms [5].

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