Thematic Comparison of Research in Civil Engineering at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and World’s Top Universities

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran

2 Earthquake Research Center, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran

Abstract

Development of different scales and methods to evaluate and compare research performance of individuals, institutes and universities has a significant role to enhance scientific policy-making procedures. Unfortunately, thematic evaluation as a tool for qualitative evaluation, has not received much attention for high-level policy-making of science and technology in the world. It seems that monitoring research trends (in specific research centers) and their similarity with those of top research institutes in the world presents a new perspective to research policy-makers and is essentially effective to find strengths and weaknesses of research approaches and future policies. In this research, the articles of the three years (2018-2019-2020) of the top 5 universities (in the 2021 QS ranking) and Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in the field of Civil and Environmental Engineering are extracted from the Scopus database. The priority of research topics is analyzed and compared based on several indicators for five top universities and Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. To validate the thematic-comparison process, researches of London College (as the sixth top research institute in the field of Civil Engineering) are also included. The results show that research topics (and their priorities) of London College, compared to Ferdowsi University, are much closer to those of the top five universities of the world. Also, in order to better evaluate the research compatibility, thematic comparison of Ferdowsi University's researches with those of the top five universities has been examined for different subfields of Civil Engineering separately. The results show that inconsistency in some sub-disciplines is very high, and research policy reconsideration is earnestly recommended.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

  1. Ghadimi, A. and Hejazi, E. (2019) Science, Technology and Science popularization policy in Iran: a National Necessity, 10(2), 5-31.
  2. Yazdani, K., Nedjat, S., Rahimi-Movaghar, A., Ghalichee, L. and Khalili, M. (2015) Scientometrics: Review of concepts, applications, and indicators. Iranian J. Epidemiol., 10, 78-88.
  3. Glänzel, W. (1996) The need for standards in bibliometric research and technology. Scientometrics, 35(1), 167-176.
  4. Moed, H.F.M., de Bruin, R.E., Nederhof, A.J., van Raan, A.F.J. and R.J.W. Tijssen (1992) State of Art Bibliometric Macro-Indicators. An overview of demand and supply, Office for Official Publications of the European Community, Luxembourg
  5. Debacker, K. and Glänzel, W. (2004) Using a bibliometric approach to support research policy making: The case of the Flemish BOF-key. Scientometrics, 59(2), 253–276.
  6. Miroiu, A., Păunescu, M. and Vîiu, G.-A. (2015) Ranking Romanian academic departments in three fields of study using the g-index. Quality in Higher Education, 21(2), 189-212, DOI:10.1080/13538322.2015.1051794.
  1. Yao, Q., Chen, K., Yao, L., Lyu, P.-H., Yang, T.-A., Luo, F., Chen, Sh., He, Lu. and Liu, Zh.-Y. (2014) Scientometric trends and knowledge maps of global health systems research. Health Research Policy and Systems, 12(26).
  2. Leydesdorff, L. and Milojević, S. (2015) Scientometrics, International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Section 8.5: Science and Technology Studies, Subsection 85030.
  3. Salatino, A. (2018) Early Detection of Research. Knowledge Media Institute The Open University.
  4. Negahban, M. and Ramezani Far, H. (2017) A Comparative Study between the Scientific Map of Iran and Global. Caspian Journal of Scientometrics, 4(2), 14-22.
  5. Alonso, S., Cabrerizo, F., Herrera-Viedma, E. and Herrera, F. (2010) HG-index: a new index to characterize the scientific output of researchers based on the H- and G-indices. Scientometrics, 82(2), 391-400.
  6. Da Luz, M.P, Marques-Portella, C., Mendlowicz, M., Gleiser, S., Coutinho, E.S.F. and Figueira, I. (2008) Institutional h-index: The performance of a new metric,in the evaluation of Brazilian Psychiatric Post-graduation Programs. Scientometrics, 77(2), 361–368.
  7. Hirsch, J.E. (2005) An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 102, 16569–16572.
  8. Lazaridis, T. (2010) Ranking university departments using the mean h-index. Scientometrics, 82(2), 211-216.
  9. Franceschini, F. and Maisano, D. (2011) Structured evaluation of the scientific output of academic research groups by recent h-based indicators. Journal of Informetrics, 5(1),  64-74.
  10. QS World University Rankings. Available: https://www.topuniversities.com/subject-rankings/methodology/[2021, September 10].
  11. QS World University Rankings. Available: https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2021/engineering-civil-structural/ [2021, September 10].
  12. VOS viewer Manual. Retrieved April 24, 2021. https://www.vosviewer.com/download.
  13. Waltman, L., Van Eck, N. and Noyons, ED.C.M. (2010 ) A unified approach to mapping and clustering of bibliometric networks. Journal of Informetrics, 4(4), 629-635.
  14. Waltman, L. and Van Eck, N. (2013) A smart local moving algorithm for large-scale modularity-based community detection Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands.

 

 

Journal of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering
Volume 23, Issue 1
January 2021
Pages 19-33

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics