Scientometric analysis of relative performance in a keyuniversity in Romania

Radu Silaghi-Dumitrescu • Augusta Sabau

Received: 7 June 2013� Akademiai Kiado, Budapest, Hungary 2014

Abstract A scientometric analysis of the Babes-Bolyai University in Romania is pro-

vided, highlighting the strong and the weak points with respect to a range of leading

international universities and referencing to some extent to nation-wide data from several

countries. Taken into account are such items as total number of publications, analyses per

subject area or per research field, number of citations, types of publications, Hirsch

indexes, and books. Internationally, chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer science,

religion, area studies, geology, paleontology, and public administration are identified as the

most active areas. Nationally, a number of additional strong points are identified, such as

psychology, history, and environmental sciences. The percentage of researchers with

reasonably high activity (e.g., at least * one publication per year as indexed in major

databases) is relatively low (*10 %), and the percentage with reasonably high interna-

tional competitiveness (based on citation counts, number of publications, books indexed in

international libraries) is at only *2 %. The decisive factor controlling an exponential

increase in publications since *2000–2004 appears to have been a conservatively man-

aged exponential increase of the national GDP and implicitly of the research budgets.

Keywords Scientometric � Romania � Babes-Bolyai � Cluj-Napoca � Database

Introduction

Romania has recently witnessed repeated attempts to redefine and reassess performance in

scientific research, including official and institutional-level attempts(Abbott 2012a, b,

2013; Ad-Astra 2012; Caruntu 2006; Florian 2006a, b; Luchian 2009; Schiermeier 2012;

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11192-014-1232-8)contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

R. Silaghi-Dumitrescu (&) � A. SabauBabes-Bolyai University, 11 Arany Janos Str, RO-400028 Cluj-Napoca, Romaniae-mail: rsilaghi@chem.ubbcluj.ro

123

ScientometricsDOI 10.1007/s11192-014-1232-8

Simon 2009). These may be understood within the context of an effort to redefine insti-

tutional and social frameworks as part of the process of integration into the European

Union, with the inherent inertia towards change, at times reinforced with politics-based

controversy. Reported here is an attempt to provide an institutional analysis over one of the

top three Romanian universities, BBU (The Babes-Bolyai University at Cluj-Napoca).

Unless otherwise specified, the data is retrieved from Thomson-Reuters ISI Web of

Knowledge,(ISI) as follows: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED)—

1993–present, Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)—1993–present, Arts & Humanities

Citation Index (A&HCI)—1993–present, Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science

(CPCI-S)—1990–present, Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Social Science &

Humanities (CPCI-SSH)—1990–present; data from Scopus(Scopus) are also presented.

The searches were performed between December 2012 and February 2013, using the

access available to the Babes-Bolyai University via the national scheme of subscription to

these databases, with inherent limitations as described above.

General relative position at national level

As shown in Table 1, BBU authors have published *7000 ISI-indexed items—which

equates to *7.5 % of all papers published by Romanian authors over the examined

timeframe. In this respect, the Bucharest Polytechnic University (8.6 %) and the Bucharest

University (8.4 %) are the only institutions outranking the BBU, with the rest of the

contenders following at more than 1 %. Several classifications over time (including, but

not limited to, those based on number of publications and citations) have indeed placed

BBU among the top 3 universities nationally, as judged by a wide range of criteria (Ad-

Astra 2012).

Types of publications

Of the total BBU publications, *80 % are research articles published in journals,

and *20 % are Proceedings. For comparison, nationwide, Romania, Germany, France or

Hungary feature similar percentages, as does an example of a leading international uni-

versity—University of Georgia (Athens, GA, USA), ranked in the top 150 according to the

Shanghai methodology (http://www.arwu.org/). In fact, in some of these cases the per-

centage of research articles drops as low as 70 %.

Dynamics of publications

Figure 1 illustrates the dynamics of publications for BBU over the past two decades. The

exponential increase, with a sharper feature between 2005 and 2008, is matched at national

level in Romania, but not in the neighboring country Hungary, or at an established top

university from the USA. The 2005–2008 sharp increase over 1993–2005 instead correlates

very well with national funding trends (ANCS 2012, Anton 2005)—with an expected

1–2 year’s lag between the two. The subsequent distinct drop in funding during the

financial crisis (2008–2011) has no strong effect on the BBU output—even though

nationwide the publication number does see a decrease. In turn, the national research

budget is seen to have increased as a direct effect of the gross GDP, especially between

Scientometrics

123

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Scientometrics

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Scientometrics

123

2005 and 2008; the exceptions are 2011, when a sharp increase in research budget is seen

despite the stalling of the GDP, and 1993–2001, when the research budget was significantly

lagging behind the GDP—a situation corrected between 1999 and 2004, when the research

budget was seen to increase by two orders of magnitude. These data suggest that the

increase in publication (and implicitly citation) numbers, nationwide and then as well as

for BBU, has had as primary cause the general increase in welfare of the country, rather

than any singular drastic reform or policy change in research (of which several were

attempted (Abbott 2013)). From this point of view, one may see these increases to have

been well within the limits of the system—hence leaving ample room for significant further

increase in the future—especially if one is to ever see effects of significant policy changes

(e.g., further increases over the *0.5 % of GDP allocated for research nationally over the

past two decades (ANCS 2012), or organizational changes); nevertheless, this history of

20 years of rather conservative management of research resources suggests little chances

of sudden effective increases in the near future, regardless of reorganizational and

administrative measures. Such trends, connecting research output with the amount of

funding, have been explored before (Must 2006; Vinkler 2008) they are to some extent

natural in the present case if one considers that the level of funding available in the early

‘90’s in Romania would equate to *500 USD/researcher/year—which amounts to less

than 2 USD/day/researcher for salaries, materials, instrumentation, etc (ANCS 2012; Anton

2005).

Also illustrated in Fig. 1 is the fact that the rate of increase in BBU’s citations rate

matches reasonably well the increase in publication number. Until 2006–2007, the increase

in citation numbers is larger than the one in publications, reaching a maximum in 2004;

after a slight decrease, this indicator begins to increase again after 2008—but this time at a

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011

BBUx10

Romania

UGA

Hungary

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011

citations

publications

citations/paper

GDP, national

research budget,national

Fig. 1 Left: evolution of publication outputs for BBU (9 10 in this graph, for convenience) vs. Universityof Georgia and vs. national data for Romania and Hungary, between 1993 and 2012. Right: valuesnormalized to unit, for BBU publications, BBU citations, BBU citations/publications (maximum absolutevalue—6.2), national research budget (actually spent amounts are given—which are lower than theprojections made at the beginnings of the respective years for 2009–2012), and national GDP 13 13 13

Scientometrics

123

pace matching (no longer overtaking) the increase in publications and in citations,

respectively. Perhaps relevant is the fact that between 2006 and 2013, the number of ISI-

indexed journals edited within Romania has increased by one order of magnitude (cur-

rently—60); these are generally of low impact—likely contributing to the slight slowing

down in citation rates. Nevertheless, even under these conditions, the total number of BBU

citations has continued to increase * exponentially (R2 = 0.83 for an exponential fit, not

shown).

Comparative analyses by research area/field

Table 1 alongside the associated data in Supporting Information, reveals that, by com-

parison with five leading universities—University of Oxford, Yale University, Universitat

Leipzig, University of Georgia, and University of Essex, BBU falls in a predictable trend,

where most of the publications come from the areas of exact sciences, with chemistry and

physics best represented. The tendency is maintained at national level in the few countries

analyzed (data not shown, but following previously documented trends (Glanzel 2000;

Schubert et al. 1989)). Nevertheless, the percentage held by chemistry at BBU is distinctly

higher than seen at national level (30 vs 15 %), as well as compared to other countries or

universities; physics and mathematics follow suit to some extent.

One may attempt to reference the BBU data against the five universities in Table 1, by

comparing the number of publications (total, as well as per subject area). To this end, the

light-gray columns in Table 1 illustrate that the BBU publications represent, overall, 16 %

compared to those of the University of Georgia, 56 % compared to the University of Essex

(UK), 7 % compared to the University of Oxford (UK), 33 % compared to Yale Univer-

sity, (USA) and 25 % compared to Universitat Leipzig (Germany). However, there are

wide variations when examining the data by fields/areas. The dark-gray columns in Table 1

illustrate how many times better a field is represented within BBU compared to the other

universities. These indicators are defined based on a philosophy previously advocated by

Frame, Braun and others for the so-called Activity Index (Schubert et al. 1989). The

Attractivity Index, built similarly by using the number of citations instead of the number of

papers,(Schubert et al. 1989) or related indices such as the crown indicator were not

computed, in light of the low number of citations found in general for BBU, and in light of

the fact that the majority of the Departments at BBU are in fields with inherently very low

citation rates where the errors of such indices would then be too large (Moed et al. 1995;

Waltman et al. 2011a, b) (see also the Methodology Considerations section, below).

In the majority of the research areas, BBU offers fewer publications compared to the

leading universities; the exceptions are related to areas where certain dedicated depart-

ments are not present. Generally, calculation of indices based on citations rather than

number of publications would place BBU in even weaker positions; to illustrate the sit-

uation to some extent, an analysis of the papers published in 2008 reveals an average

citation rate of 4.5 for BBU, 3.8 for Romania, 9.2 for Hungary, and 13.3 for the University

of Georgia. Beyond this, one may note in Table 1 a few areas for which the relative

contribution in number of papers is consistently higher at BBU compared to the other

universities (higher activity): Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Reli-

gion, Area Studies, Geology, Public Administration. A few narrower subjects, mostly

associated to the ones already mentioned, also feature in this ‘‘most active’’ category e.g.,

Paleontology, Thermodynamics, Spectroscopy, Crystallography, Materials Science,

Nuclear Science, Automation Control, Electrochemistry, Energy Fuels. By contrast, a

Scientometrics

123

number fields feature consistently smaller relative contributions at BBU compared to the

other universities—e.g., Biochemistry And Molecular Biology, Literature, Cell Biology,

Linguistics, Sociology, Government Law, Social Work, Philosophy, Behavioral Sciences,

Microbiology, Water Resources, Demography, International Relations, Geography,

Archaeology, Anthropology, Sport Sciences. Part of these data are explained by the rel-

ative numbers of faculty associated with the respective fields. For instance, there are

approximately 15 faculty at BBU specialized in molecular biology and biochemistry, (half

of which are junior and not directing an own research group), compared to 80 in chemistry

or 40 in physics.

A few research areas feature predominantly positive values in terms of relative con-

tributions and may thus be viewed as potentially strong points—e.g., Business Economics,

History, Geochemistry Geophysics. Predominantly lower activity is seen from Psychology,

Environmental Sciences Ecology, Plant Sciences.

Individual performance

The highest individual numbers of publications, numbers of citations, and Hirsch indices

for BBU researchers were also collected (cf. Supporting Information). Based on Thomson-

Reuters data, the h indices of the most active 24 researchers at BBU have an average value

of *14, with the highest value being 25. For comparison, using the same methodology, the

average for a single department at a major international institution, University of Georgia,

is *25, with actual values ranging between 10 and 66 (24 of the current number of faculty

from the Department of Chemistry at UGA were taken into account for this analysis; the

excluded names include those hired within the past 8 years, whose publications are likely

to reflect predominantly other affiliations). Thus, the top values at BBU compare rea-

sonably to what can be seen in an active department at a leading international university;

on the downside, one may note that in addition to the top 24 researchers fitting to some

extent in relatively high standards, the total number of faculty at BBU in fact is *1500

(giving a ratio slightly under 2 %). Related to this aspect, the institutional Hirsch index for

BBU is 57; most of the BBU authors contributing to this index are already present in the

2 % mentioned above.

Perhaps not unexpectedly in light of the analysis shown in Table 1 and in light of

general trends in science (Hirsch 2005), almost all of the researchers in Supporting

Information Table S2 belong to the fields of Chemistry and Physics (with one significant

exception, from Psychology). To partially compensate for the bias brought by the fact that

there is strong dependence of the number of publications on the subject area, a separate

search was conducted using Romania as a criterion in the ‘‘address’’ field, and identifying

in each research area/subject the positions occupied by the BBU employees within the top

50. As detailed in Supporting Information Table S3, a total of 413 positions of the 5,667

identified in the various categories belong to BBU researchers—which amounts to 7.3 %,

in a perhaps expected agreement with the fact, cited above, that 7.5 % of the Romanian-

authored publications feature BBU authors. The people in Table 2 are generally re-

encountered among these 413 positions—and especially among the top 10 positions. In

more detail, of the 413 entries, 12 positions pertain to #1 rankings (out of 120 #1 positions

over all areas, i.e. 10 %), 65 to top 5 rankings (out of 600, i.e. 10.8 %), and 137 to top 10

rankings (out of 1,200, i.e. 11.4 %) for BBU authors.

The data in Supporting Information Tables S2, showing total number of publications, h-

indices, and total numbers of publications without self-citations, reveal expected

Scientometrics

123

correlations, which to some extent also allow quantitative institutional predictions. There is

an expected linear correlation between the total h and the non-self-citing h

(y = 0.7526x ? 0.2872, R2 = 0.8558); the differences between the two parameters for a

given researcher differ widely, between a solid group with 0 and the opposing extreme with

10 units. On the other hand, the relatively poor correlation between h and number of

citations (both parameters excluding self-citations), y = 5.928x -209.48, R2 = 0.6619, is

only surpassed by a small margin by the previously invoked (Hirsch 2005) correlation

between the square root of the number of citations, and h (again, both without self-

citations): y = 1.5872x ? 3.8091, R2 = 0.722. A logistic variation of the latter relation-

ship, with a similar degree of correlation (R2 = 0.729), is the Hill function:

h ¼ 33 � citationsð Þ0:68h i.

citationsð Þ0:68þ 1344ð Þ0:68h i

where, by analogy with the biochemical Hill equation, 33 is the maximum value attainable

using the set of tools/conditions available (in this case, the respective institutional setting),

and 1,344 is the number of citations at which one can reach half of the maximal

h. Technically, this suggests, albeit not very accurately, that one should not expect BBU

researchers to go beyond a value of *30 for the non-self-citing h—at least not within the

current institutional setting. Moreover, reaching such maximal values would only be

possible by increasing the number of citations by an order of magnitude over the largest

value now recorded for a BBU researcher. While h *30 has previously been noted to be

already reconcilable with scientific performance of highest impact, values well in excess of

50 and even 100 are not uncommon among competitive researchers, especially in areas

where BBU displays strengths (Hirsch 2005). The exponent, 0.68, denotes, in the general

form of the biochemical Hill equation, the ‘cooperativity’ of the system—and is unitary

when such cooperativity is absent (in which case the equation becomes a more general

Langmuir case), and sub-unitary for ‘negative cooperativity’. The slight ‘‘negative coop-

erativity’’ observed in our data set implies that people with lower citation counts seem to

display larger h indices that expected based on a simpler Langmuir model.

The number of publications did not correlate well with the remaining parameters: R2

was found to be 0.2–0.3 with any of the other sets in Table S3, both for linear and for the

Hill correlations.

Outreach of BBU research

Table 2 illustrates in which journals the BBU articles are published—ranked by percent

contributions. The first six journals are edited within Romania, and two of them (including

the top one) are edited by BBU itself. The seventh one is an international physics journal

(but not one of the upper half in most rankings based on impact). Several of the remaining

journals are also edited in Romania (a total of 82, at the present time).

Overall, *10 % of the BBU publications are in own journals (with almost half

coming from only one of these), and a total of 25 % are in Romanian journals. For

comparison, nationwide, as illustrated by the data in Supporting Information, 35 % of the

Romanian articles are published in Romanian journals. Whereas the national trend is

somewhat unproductive in terms of placing local research outside of the main interna-

tional scientific currents of knowledge (as also previously discussed (Glanzel, 2000)),

BBU appears to be displaying a higher degree of internationalization, compared to the

national average.

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Research output in the form of books is relatively more difficult to track scientomet-

rically. An attempt was made to evaluate the output of the BBU, by verifying how many of

the books published by its researchers can be found in a relatively large number of

libraries. The threshold set to this end was a number of *100 different libraries holding

books by a given author, according to the WorldCat database (www.worldcat.org). A

number of 24 authors were identified in this way, of which 17 had already been identified

separately via the journal-based criteria discussed above.

Methodology considerations

The data shown here have predominantly involved the number of publications and the

number of citations, ordered either irrespective of field or within each field, alongside

derived activity indicators and h-indices. A host of more complex indicators are further

available and could shed better light on the classification of the respective scientists and

institutions (Aguillo and Gutierrez Labajos 2010; Bornmann and Leydesdorff 2012;

Glanzel 2000; Glanzel et al. 2009; Martin and Irvine 1983; Moed et al. 1995; Schubert

et al. 1989; Van Den Berghe et al. 1998; Van Leeuwen et al. 2001; Vinkler 1998; Waltman

Table 2 Thomson-Reuters journals where BBU authors publish, ordered by the number of papers; valuesup to 40 are shown

Source titles Records %

Studia Universitatis Babes Bolyai Chemia 347 4.55

Journal Of Optoelectronics And Advanced Materials 267 3.5

Revista De Chimie 217 2.8

Revue Roumaine De Chimie 210 2.7

Journal For The Study Of Religions And Ideologies 186 2.4

Transylvanian Review 151 2.0

Modern Physics Letters B 121 1.6

International Journal Of Heat And Mass Transfer 99 1.3

Transylvanian Review Of Administrative Sciences 94 1.2

International Journal Of Modern Physics B 75 1.0

Journal Of Magnetism And Magnetic Materials 66 0.9

Journal Of Mathematical Analysis And Applications 63 0.8

Journal Of Molecular Structure 63 0.8

Journal Of Alloys And Compounds 52 0.7

Lecture Notes In Computer Science 52 0.7

International Communications In Heat And Mass Transfer 51 0.7

Journal Of Superconductivity 51 0.7

Journal Of Cognitive And Behavioral Psychotherapies 48 0.6

Physical Review B 46 0.6

Nonlinear Analysis Theory Methods Applications 44 0.6

AIP Conference Proceedings 42 0.5

Journal Of Organometallic Chemistry 42 0.5

MATCH Communications In Mathematical And In Computer Chemistry 42 0.5

Transport In Porous Media 42 0.5

Acta Crystallographica Section E Structure Reports Online 40 0.5

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et al. 2011a, b). The reader’s attention is however called to the data, commented upon

Table 2, where already based on these simple criteria less than 2 % of the employees of the

University are found to present data matching favorably against highly-competitive

institutions throughout the world. A more conservative estimate gives *10 % when

additionally considering people with 20 publications throughout the past 20 years

(i.e., *one paper per year), alongside the WorldCat data quoted above—thus cancelling a

good part of the research area bias. The 2 % are responsible for 40 % of the total BBU

publications; the 10 % -are responsible for 95 %. Then, for 90 % of the BBU researchers,

there is an average of *0.02 publications per year over the past 20 years, in terms of

Thomson-Reuters indexing. As also discussed in the Introduction, several attempts to

reform, re-classify and reorder the national research system have been made in Romania—

and implicitly at BBU. These attempts have typically revolved around scientometric

indices and as such have put pressure, in terms of reporting data as well as in terms of

planning future outputs, on such small percentages of researchers. It is our opinion that the

attempts to classify the entire mass of researchers based on criteria aimed at differentiating

between the members of the top 2 % may inherently be counterproductive for the

respective system as long as the focus is set on the competition between these, rather than

on measures addressing the remaining 98 % of the researchers. The resources of the

respective community (whether it be BBU, Romania, or any other entity at a similar level

of social/technological development) are currently directed, to a major extent, precisely at

the 98 %; it is these resources that could mostly benefit from more efficient allocation and

administrative/policy improvement; implicitly, while not expecting unreasonable progress,

it is this pool of researchers that hold the most potential for future increase.

Many modern bibliometric approaches seek to provide increasingly balanced compar-

isons between research fields. To some extent this was attempted here as well. Yet, one

component dictating the number of publications is the level of public interest in the topic,

manifested via funding by taxpayers -either directly via governments or indirectly via

private enterprises. The amount of funding reflects (or should do so) the interest of the

society in the respective field, implicitly dictating the number of researchers, and hence the

number of publications, journals, citations, etc. A biomedical article, for instance, beyond

stirring interest from an inherently larger body of researchers, is likely to appeal to a larger

body of tax payers, than, perhaps, an article dealing with philosophy. This, de facto, is an

important difference in impact within society in general. Should one seek to completely

level out such differences by normalizing formulae, or should one rather seek to educate

the respective public to the extent that no leveling will be needed anymore? While it is

unreasonable to compare, e.g., h indices between a chemist and a linguist, a complete

leveling, when thoroughly endorsed, would invoke wider (and so far not entirely acted

upon) implications if the principle of ‘‘equal internal ranking = equal retribution’’ is

applied at all levels of society, not only in research.

Conclusions

According to the present scientometric analysis, the Babes-Bolyai University confirms its

status as one of the top Romanian universities, both in terms of quality and in terms of

quantity of the research output. Its performance, as compared to a set of 5 universities

present within the top 500 worldwide, is nevertheless very weak. Strong points are iden-

tified in chemistry, physics, religion, geology, history, psychology, mathematics, materials

science and ecology. These fields either feature relative contributions at BBU distinctly

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larger than at other universities, and/or feature individuals who occupy the highest posi-

tions when ranking Romanian researchers within each field based on the number of

published articles. A strong potential for increase is identified in a few other areas, such as

molecular biology and biochemistry.

Acknowledgments Profs. Sorin Filipescu, Simion Simon and Daniel David are thanked for helpfuldiscussions.

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