How do you define and measure research productivity?

Giovanni Abramo () and Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo ()
Additional contact information
Giovanni Abramo: National Research Council of Italy
Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo: National Research Council of Italy

Scientometrics, 2014, vol. 101, issue 2, No 14, 1129-1144

Abstract: Abstract Productivity is the quintessential indicator of efficiency in any production system. It seems it has become a norm in bibliometrics to define research productivity as the number of publications per researcher, distinguishing it from impact. In this work we operationalize the economic concept of productivity for the specific context of research activity and show the limits of the commonly accepted definition. We propose then a measurable form of research productivity through the indicator “Fractional Scientific Strength (FSS)”, in keeping with the microeconomic theory of production. We present the methodology for measure of FSS at various levels of analysis: individual, field, discipline, department, institution, region and nation. Finally, we compare the ranking lists of Italian universities by the two definitions of research productivity.

Keywords: Research productivity; FSS; Research evaluation; University rankings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (54)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-014-1269-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:101:y:2014:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-014-1269-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-014-1269-8

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().