La evaluacion de la investigacion: Espana suspende

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the research performance of Spanish universities using citation-based metrics, revealing their inefficiency compared to leading countries due to a lower proportion of highly cited papers.

Contribution

It applies heavy tail citation analysis to assess research impact, highlighting the shortcomings of Spanish universities in producing highly cited research.

Findings

Spanish universities have a lower proportion of highly cited papers.

Research efficiency in Spain is below that of top scientific countries.

Analysis confirms the correlation between citations and scientific impact.

Abstract

The research assessments of countries or institutions should reveal their contribution to the advancement of science. Taking into consideration the correlation that exists between scientific impact and number of citations, research assessments can be based on citation counts. However, it is crucial to perform the counts in the heavy tail of citation distributions. Following this heavy tail approach, all measurements performed in Spanish universities show that their research is inefficient because the proportion of highly cited papers is much lower than in the most scientifically advanced countries. The same conclusion is reached when considering the number of researchers in the Ioannidis, Boyack, and Baas lists of highly cited researchers.