Uncertain research country rankings. Should we continue producing uncertain rankings?

Rodríguez-Navarro, Alonso

Uncertain research country rankings. Should we continue producing uncertain rankings?

Journal of Data and Information Science

Volume 10 (2025): Issue 3 (June 2025)

By:

Alonso Rodríguez-Navarro

Open Access

|May 2025

Figures & Tables

Country versus global ranks of domestic papers. Comparison of actual global ranks (open circles) with those calculated for the power law defined by P and Ptop 10% (closed circles). Publication window: 2014–2017; citation window: 2019–2022.

Histogram with logarithmic binning of citations to world publications in the scientific topics of solar cells, semiconductors, and immunity (from left to right). Blue bars correspond to a lognormal synthetic series to guide the eye. Publication window: 2014–2017; citation window: 2019–2022.

Histogram with logarithmic binning of citations to publications from the UK, Japan, and South Korea on the scientific topic of solar cells. Publication window: 2014–2017; citation window: 2019–2022.

Plots of Ptop 5%/Ptop 5% and Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% versus Ptop 10%/P in selected universities. Data from the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2023, means of four evaluation periods, and fractional counting. a and b panels: “Physical and engineering sciences;” c and d panels:” Biomedical and health sciences.” Evaluation periods and selection of universities are described in the text.

Local versus global ranks of US domestic papers published by the universities of Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in immunology. Comparison of the actual ranks of the papers of these universities with the ranks calculated for the power laws defined by P and Ptop 10% (left panel), and Ptop 10% and Ptop1% (right panel).

Classification of universities attending to the variation of the Ptop 10%/P, Ptop 5%/Ptop 50%, and Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% ratios: stable (Type A), decreasing (Type B), or increasing (Type C)_ Field of Biomedical and health sciences_

University	Country	P_{top 10%}/P	P_{top 5%}/P_{top 50%}	P_{top 1%}/P_{top 10%}
Type A
Northeastern University, USA	United States	0.132	0.131	0.139
University of Arizona	United States	0.100	0.090	0.091
Purdue University, West Lafayette	United States	0.100	0.092	0.090
The University of Warwick	United Kingdom	0.142	0.138	0.152
University of East Anglia	United Kingdom	0.146	0.132	0.129
Peking University	China	0.086	0.079	0.080
Xiamen University	China	0.081	0.075	0.074
University of Milan	Italy	0.104	0.096	0.100
The University of Tokyo	Japan	0.081	0.084	0.089
Type B
Rockefeller University	United States	0.326	0.282	0.182
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	United States	0.298	0.260	0.192
Princeton University	United States	0.267	0.236	0.173
Yale University	United States	0.225	0.182	0.129
University of California, Berkeley	United States	0.214	0.185	0.138
California Institute of Technology	United States	0.213	0.185	0.150
University of Oxford	United Kingdom	0.208	0.178	0.133
University of Cambridge	United Kingdom	0.208	0.174	0.130
Tsinghua University	China	0.137	0.126	0.115
Soochow University	China	0.071	0.061	0.046
University of Toronto	Canada	0.139	0.127	0.107
Universität Hamburg	Germany	0.114	0.099	0.085
Flinders University	Australia	0.111	0.107	0.082
Type C
Indiana University, Bloomington	United States	0.109	0.103	0.128
Kiel University	Germany	0.109	0.106	0.123
Tohoku University	Japan	0.062	0.071	0.078

Basic description of scientific publications in terms of P, Ptop 10%/P, and Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% in 18 selected cases_

Country	Solar cells			Semiconductors			Immunity
Country	P	P_{top 10%}/P	P_{top 1%}/_{P_{top 10%}}	P	P_{top 10%}/P	P_{top 1%}/_{P_{top 10%}}	P	P_{top 10%}/P	P_{top 1%}/_{P_{top 10%}}
Global	61,202			58,081			42,586
Germany	1,834	0.077	0.063	1,748	0.065	0.061	1,177	0.091	0.056
India	3,138	0.052	N/C	3,056	0.046	0.056	962	0.021	N/C
Japan	2,742	0.059	0.092	3,167	0.058	0.087	1,491	0.057	0.106
South Korea	4,193	0.068	0.102	2,668	0.066	0.068	1,088	0.053	N/C
UK	892	0.182	0.204	810	0.115	0.204	893	0.103	0.076
USA	5,474	0.146	0.141	6,004	0.149	0.111	7,946	0.145	0.122

Number of universities that belong to the three types described in Tables 2 and 3_

Country	Physical sciences and engineering			Biomedical and health sciences
Country	Type A	Type B	Type C	Type A	Type B	Type C
Australia	4	12	0	7	9	0
Belgium	2	1	0	3	4	0
Brazil	1	0	0	0	0	1
Canada	7	0	2	6	5	0
China	23	50	1	9	21	0
Denmark	0	4	0	3	0	0
Finland	0	2	0	1	1	0
France	9	2	2	7	6	1
Germany	14	9	2	20	3	2
Greece	0	1	0	1	0	0
India	0	0	2	0	0	0
Iran	1	2	1	0	0	1
Ireland	1	0	0	0	3	0
Israel	0	3	1	3	1	0
Italy	7	0	0	5	10	0
Japan	2	0	6	4	0	1
Malaysia	0	0	1	0	0	0
Netherlands	3	4	0	2	7	0
New Zealand	0	0	1	2	0	0
Norway	0	1	0	2	1	0
Poland	0	0	1	0	0	1
Portugal	3	0	0	1	0	1
Singapore	0	2	0	1	0	0
South Korea	3	4	4	3	1	0
Spain	3	1	2	5	2	0
Sweden	5	1	0	2	3	0
Switzerland	1	4	0	1	6	0
Taiwan	0	0	2	2	1	0
United Kingdom	7	15	1	8	19	0
United States	17	48	3	36	61	4
Total	113	166	32	134	164	12

Classification of universities attending to the variation of the Ptop 10%/P, Ptop 5%/Ptop 50%, and Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% ratios: stable (Type A), decreasing (Type B), or increasing (Type C)_ Field of Physical sciences and engineering_

University	Country	P_{top 10%}/P	P_{top 5%}/P_{top 50%}	P_{top 1%}/P_{top 10%}
Type A
Pennsylvania State University	United States	0.138	0.129	0.117
Florida State University	United States	0.124	0.121	0.130
University of Virginia	United States	0.121	0.118	0.118
University of Nottingham	United Kingdom	0.141	0.125	0.120
University of Exeter	United Kingdom	0.127	0.108	0.125
Chongqing University	China	0.113	0.106	0.109
Hohai University	China	0.103	0.113	0.089
University of Queensland	Australia	0.140	0.131	0.151
University of Bordeaux	France	0.112	0.109	0.118
Type B
Harvard University	United States	0.254	0.221	0.170
Stanford University	United States	0.249	0.201	0.160
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	United States	0.235	0.196	0.155
Yale University	United States	0.225	0.182	0.129
Princeton University	United States	0.211	0.177	0.125
University of Colorado, Boulder	United States	0.168	0.165	0.104
Imperial College London	United Kingdom	0.161	0.135	0.120
University of Oxford	United Kingdom	0.167	0.146	0.124
University of Cambridge	United Kingdom	0.170	0.145	0.129
Lanzhou University	China	0.098	0.074	0.052
Fuzhou University	China	0.127	0.121	0.107
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven	Belgium	0.149	0.136	0.113
Heidelberg University	Germany	0.147	0.127	0.116
Type C
Nagoya University	Japan	0.073	0.081	0.120
Tohoku University	Japan	0.075	0.082	0.103
Drexel University	United States	0.149	0.145	0.183

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2025-0030 | Journal eISSN: 2543-683X | Journal ISSN: 2096-157X

Journal RSS Feed

Language: English

Page range: 161 - 182

Submitted on: Mar 21, 2025

Accepted on: Apr 24, 2025

Published on: May 13, 2025

Published by: Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Science Library

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Publication frequency: 4 issues per year

Keywords:

Related subjects:

Information technology,

Project management,

Databases and data mining

© 2025 Alonso Rodríguez-Navarro, published by Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Science Library
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Previous article Volume 10 (2025): Issue 3 (June 2025)Next article

Uncertain research country rankings. Should we continue producing uncertain rankings?

Figures & Tables

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

Classification of universities attending to the variation of the Ptop 10%/P, Ptop 5%/Ptop 50%, and Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% ratios: stable (Type A), decreasing (Type B), or increasing (Type C)_ Field of Biomedical and health sciences_

Basic description of scientific publications in terms of P, Ptop 10%/P, and Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% in 18 selected cases_

Number of universities that belong to the three types described in Tables 2 and 3_

Classification of universities attending to the variation of the Ptop 10%/P, Ptop 5%/Ptop 50%, and Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% ratios: stable (Type A), decreasing (Type B), or increasing (Type C)_ Field of Physical sciences and engineering_

Paradigm

My account