Department-level comparison of universities' scientific output: A bibliometric study of Greek universities

TL;DR

This study develops a methodology and tools for department-level bibliometric assessment and applies it to all Greek university departments, revealing variations in scientific impact across disciplines and institutions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel methodology and automated tools for department-level bibliometric analysis, enabling detailed performance assessment at a granular level.

Findings

Significant variation in scientific impact among Greek university departments.

Disciplinary differences influence publication and citation metrics.

Tools developed can be used for ongoing monitoring of university departments worldwide.

Abstract

Although bibliometric studies for the assessment of scientific output at university-level are relatively common, data for performance at department-level rarely exist. In this paper we develop a methodology and tools for conducting department-level assessments, and conduct for the first time a complete bibliometric study of scientific output of all university departments in Greece. The study is based on data from Scopus about the number of scientific publications and respective citations of all faculty members in each department for the period 2017-2021. Code scripts were developed using R to query the Scopus database and automatically generate statistics, as well as an online application to view the results. The results reveal interesting facts about the scientific impact of greek university departments, which vary between universities and thematic areas. The developed tools can be used for continuous monitoring and evaluation of university departments worldwide.