Dag W. Aksnes

Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education | NIFU · NIFU

Purpose The ranking lists of highly cited researchers receive much public attention. In common interpretations, highly cited researchers are perceived to have made extraordinary contributions to science. Thus, the metrics of highly cited researchers are often linked to notions of breakthroughs, scientific excellence, and lone geniuses. Design/meth...

Many studies on research productivity and performance suggest that men consistently outperform women. However, women and men are spread unevenly throughout the academy both horizontally (e.g., by scientific field) and vertically (e.g., by academic position), suggesting that aggregate numbers (comparing all men with all women) may reflect the differ...

For a long time, citation counts have been used to measure scientific impact or quality. Do such measures align with researchers’ assessments of the quality of their works? In this study, we address this issue by decomposing the research quality concept into constituent parts and analysing their correspondence with citation measures. The focus is o...

Metrics on scientific publications and their citations are easily accessible and are often referred to in assessments of research and researchers. This paper addresses whether metrics are considered a legitimate and integral part of such assessments. Based on an extensive questionnaire survey in three countries, the opinions of researchers are anal...

The aim of this study is to analyze the evolution of international research collaboration from 1980 to 2021. The study examines the main global patterns as well as those specific to individual countries, country groups, and different areas of research. The study is based on the Web of Science Core collection database. More than 50 million publicat...

In this article, we study the motivation and performance of researchers. More specifically, we investigate what motivates researchers across different research fields and countries and how this motivation influences their research performance. The basis for our study is a large-N survey of economists, cardiologists, and physicists in Denmark, Norwa...

The main objective of the open access (OA) movement is to make scientific literature freely available to everyone. This may be of particular importance to researchers in lower-income countries, who often face barriers due to high subscription costs. In this article, we address this issue by analysing over time the reference lists of scientific publ...

Many recent higher education reforms worldwide have been legitimated by their potential impact on the performance of universities and colleges. However, we know less about the actual impact of the changes implemented. This article examines the extent to which research performance can be associated with specific organizational characteristics at the...

Making scientific literature freely available to everyone is a main objective of the open access (OA) movement. This may be of particular importance to researchers in lower-income countries, where access to literature is often hindered by high subscription costs. This study addresses this issue by analyzing reference lists of the world’s output of...

Flertallet av studentene ved landets høyere utdanningsinstitusjoner er kvinner, og det er like mange kvinner som menn som tar doktorgrad. Likevel er over to tredeler av professorene ved landets universiteter og høyskoler menn. Hvordan kan vi forstå denne vedvarende kjønnsubalansen? Hva er det med akademia som gjør at kvinner faller fra på veien opp...

Flertallet av studentene ved landets høyere utdanningsinstitusjoner er kvinner, og det er like mange kvinner som menn som tar doktorgrad. Likevel er over to tredeler av professorene ved landets universiteter og høyskoler menn. Hvordan kan vi forstå denne vedvarende kjønnsubalansen? Hva er det med akademia som gjør at kvinner faller fra på veien opp...

In this study we are analysing the research performance of Italian and Norwegian professors using constituent components of the Fractional Scientific Strength (FSS) indicator. The main focus is on differences across fields in publication output and citation impact. The overall performance (FSS) of the two countries, which differ considerably in res...

Female representation among students and graduates in higher education is growing internationally. This is a promising trend for achieving gender balance in top positions in academia. But there is still a long way to go, as women accounted for 26 per cent in top positions at European higher education institutions in 2018. In this article, we examin...

As the importance of 'excellence' increases in higher education, so too does the importance of indicators to measure research productivity. We examine how such indicators might disproportionately benefit men by analysing extent to which the separate components of the Norwegian Publication Indicator (NPI), a bibliometric model used to distribute per...

This paper addresses the relationship between age and international research collaboration. The main research question is: do younger researchers collaborate more internationally than their senior colleagues? A common assumption is that younger generations are generally more internationally oriented than older generations. On the other hand, senior...

In this study, the scientific performance of Italian and Norwegian university professors is analysed using bibliometric indicators. The study is based on over 36,000 individuals and their publication output during the period 2011–2015. Applying a multidimensional indicator in which several aspects of the research performance are captured, we find l...

In this study, the scientific performance of Italian and Norwegian university professors is analysed using bibliometric indicators. The study is based on over 36,000 individuals and their publication output during the period 2011-2015. Applying a multidimensional indicator in which several aspects of the research performance are captured, we find l...

Previous studies have pointed at participation in the European Framework Programs for Research and Innovation as elite driven, foremost by large and prestigious universities. By analyzing all proposals (including rejected proposals) rather than funded projects only, we have investigated whether such findings also hold for success in proposal decisi...

This is the first ever attempt of application in a country other than Italy of the output-to-input indicator FSS, to assess and compare the research performance of professors and universities, within and between countries. A special attention has been devoted to the presentation of the methodology developed to set up a common field classification s...

In this study we are analysing the research performance of Italian and Norwegian professors using constituent components of the Fractional Scientific Strength (FSS) indicator. The main focus is on differences across fields in publication output and citation impact. The overall performance (FSS) of the two countries, which differ considerably in res...

This is the first ever attempt of application in a country other than Italy of a research efficiency indicator (FSS), to assess and compare the performance of professors and universities, within and between countries. A special attention has been devoted to the presentation of the methodology developed to set up a common field classification scheme...

This paper addresses gender differences in international research collaboration measured through international co-authorship. The study is based on a dataset consisting of 5600 Norwegian researchers and their publication output during a 3-year period (44,000 publications). Two different indicators are calculated. First, the share of researchers tha...

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess the coverage of the scientific literature in Scopus and Web of Science from the perspective of research evaluation. Design/methodology/approach: The academic communities of Norway have agreed on certain criteria for what should be included as original research publications in research evaluation and f...

Citations are increasingly used as performance indicators in research policy and within the research system. Usually, citations are assumed to reflect the impact of the research or its quality. What is the justification for these assumptions and how do citations relate to research quality? These and similar issues have been addressed through severa...

In this study, we investigate whether university department size is important in determining publication productivity and citation impact. Drawing on a unique dataset containing a variety of different variables at department levels, we are able to provide a richer picture of the research performance than what typically has been the case in many pre...

Few research topics are more directly related to global challenges than development research. As the UN Sustainable Development Goals have committed the global community to a universal effort in addressing these challenges, understanding the impacts of development research seems both relevant and timely. This report presents a mixed method analysis...

The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) is a unique institution with a history that is closely related to Norwegian policy regarding Svalbard, and to clever development of a highly specialised Arctic university institution by all the Norwegian universities. In practical terms, Norwegian sovereignty on the archipelago as confirmed by the Treaty of...

We investigate methodological problems in measuring research productivity on the national level by comparing official R&D statistics from the OECD with publication data from the Web of Science. Data from 18 countries are analysed. The paper problematizes the approach taken in studies where R&D statistics are used as an input variable and publicatio...

This pilot analysis is the result of an exploratory collaboration between the University of the Arctic (UArctic) Science & Research Analytics Task Force and Digital Science's international research teams. The aim was to assess the global funding landscape around Arctic-related research for the decade spanning 2006 to 2015 using the funding data fro...

The data used in the preceding pilot report, “International Arctic Research: Analyzing Global Funding Trends” and working paper, "Arctic Research Publications," consisted of publicly-available funding data and published scientific articles, both of which undergo a process of peer review and, therefore, tend to be trusted by the scientific community...

Professors and associate professors (“professors”) in full-time positions are key personnel in the scientific activity of university departments, both in conducting their own research and in their roles as project leaders and mentors to younger researchers. Typically, this group of personnel also contributes significantly to the publication output...

There exist a significant number of information sources, apart from the scientific literature, with which to assess the social impact (not to be confused with “societal impact”) of the findings produced by Arctic researchers and institutions. Various policy documents, online news and media publications, white papers, tweets, and Facebook posts prov...

This pilot analysis is the result of an exploratory collaboration between the UArctic Science & Research Analytics Task Force and Digital Science's international research teams. The aim was to assess the global funding landscape around Arctic-related research for the decade spanning 2006 to 2015 using the funding data from the Dimensions dataset, w...

We used bibliometric indicators to characterize recent (2010–2013) research activity in fisheries science with the objective of garnering insights into how this increased effort has been directed. Specifically, we provide an overview of the primary literature on fisheries research, including which countries are the largest contributors (USA, China,...

In Norwegian research universities, a large individual increase has taken place in scientific and scholarly publishing over the last 30 years. The purpose of this article is to explain the reasons for this growth in a generational perspective. We put forward six hypotheses that can be illuminated by cross-sectional data drawn from five surveys to a...

This study investigates how scientific performance in terms of publication rate is influenced by the gender, age and academic position of the researchers. Previous studies have shown that these factors are important variables when analysing scientific productivity at the individual level. What is new with our approach is that we have been able to i...

In the past two decades, centres of excellence (CoE) and other ‘research excellence initiatives’ likely to increase the cumulative advantages and stratification of science, have been implemented in many countries. Based on empirical studies of CoE in four Nordic countries, this paper examines how the resources provided by CoE schemes (generous long...

The Relative Specialization Index (RSI) is an indicator that measures the research profile of a country by comparing the share of a given field in the publications of a given country with the share of the same field in the world total of publications. If measured over time, this indicator may be influenced in the world total by the increased repres...

We analyse how Johan Hjort's publication, "Fluctuations in the great fisheries of northern Europe, viewed in the light of biological research" (Hjort, 1914), has been cited in the subsequent scientific literature. In the context of this special issue commemorating the 100th anniversary of Hjort's seminal publication, our objective is to provide ins...

Johan Hjort’s 1914 publication, “Fluctuations in the great fisheries of northern Europe, viewed in the light of biological research”, has been cited at least 1000 times. We used bibliometric methods to analyze the citing articles in order to assess how Hjort’s work has influenced fishery science. Citation context analysis demonstrated that Hjort’s...

Background: The citation frequency of a publication is often interpreted as an expression of its scientific impact. Previous citation analyses of Norwegian medical research have either focused on universities and university hospitals or on subject areas at the national level. Such analyses have paid little attention to other health enterprises, de...

The scientific performance of mobile and non-mobile researchers is analysed using publication and citation indicators in a study of more than 11,000 Norwegian university researchers. Two types of mobility are investigated: change of workplace during the scientific career and mobility from an academic institution granting the highest degree to anoth...

While many studies have compared research productivity across scientific fields, they have mostly focused on the “hard sciences,” in many cases due to limited publication data for the “softer” disciplines; these studies have also typically been based on a small sample of researchers. In this study we use complete publication data for all researcher...

This study investigates how scientific performance in terms of publication rate is influencedby the gender, age and academic position of the researchers. Previous studies have shownthat these factors are important variables when analysing scientific productivity at theindividual level. What is new with our approach is that we have been able to iden...

In this paper we first analyse the popular notion that internationalization is increasing in the STI and economic domain. We will do so by addressing the following set of questions on internationalization: - To what degree does the internationalization trend in Science, Technology and Innovation and the Economy at large really occur in the Netherla...

This paper presents an empirical analysis of two different methodologies for calculating national citation indicators: whole counts and fractionalised counts. The aim of our study is to investigate the effect on relative citation indicators when citations to documents are fractionalised among the authoring countries. We have performed two analyses:...

In this study we have analysed research cooperation between a Norwegian university and its affiliated university hospital using contextual metadata based on the CERIF (Common European Research Information Format) model on co-authored publications. The purpose is to analyse the extent and nature of cooperation between the institutions. The study fun...

Numerous studies have shown that female scientists tend to publish significantly fewer publications than do their male colleagues. In this study, we have analyzed whether similar differences also can be found in terms of citation rates. Based on a large-scale study of 8,500 Norwegian researchers and more than 37,000 publications covering all areas...

We investigate methodological problems in measuring research productivity on the national level by comparing official R&D statistics from the OECD with publication data from the ISI Web of Science. Special attention is paid to the results for the USA, Canada and the UK. This problematizes the approach taken in studies where R&D statistics are used...

This paper looks at how citations are perceived among scientists. Based on a questionnaire survey it traces the repertoire of views and experiences about citations that could be found among Norwegian scientists that had published highly cited papers. Their views circle around three issues: the relation between the quality (or importance or signific...

The present article explores the structure of and recent developments in research activities in the polar regions. Based oil a bibliographic Study of published papers indexed in the ISI Web of Science during the period 1981-2007, we have analyzed trends in publication, scientific disciplines and subdisciplines. coauthorship. and international colla...

The study includes all disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, health sciences, natural sciences and engineering at Norway's four major universities (Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, and Tromsø). The study is based on a database containing complete data at the level of individuals for scientific/scholarly publishing at the higher education institut...

While the increase in internationalisation of science is well documented, there is less literature that explicitly addresses the driving forces behind this trend. In this paper we investigate the relationship between science policy and the growth of international scientific collaboration. We look into whether overall globalisation trends can explai...

The phenomenon that different persons may have the same author name (homonymy) represents a major problem for publication analysis at individual levels and for retriving publications based on author names more generally. In such cases, all publications from the persons sharing the name will be collected in search results. This makes it difficult to...

Self-citations - those where authors cite their own works - account for a significant portion of all citations. These self-references may result from the cumulative nature of individual research, the need for personal gratification, or the value of self-citation as a rhetorical and tactical tool in the struggle for visibility and scientific authori...

In this study scientists were asked about their own publication history and their citation counts. The study shows that the citation counts of the publications correspond reasonably well with the authors' own assessments of scientific contribution. Generally, citations proved to have the highest accuracy in identifying either major or minor contrib...

This dissertation aims at contributing towards the discussion on the use of citations as indicators. A particular focus is directed towards highly cited papers. Because citation distributions are extremely skewed in which most publications are poorly cited or not cited at all and a few publications are very highly cited, it is clear that this pheno...

This study investigates the relationship between bibliometric indicators and the outcomes of peer reviews. Based on a case study of research groups at the University of Bergen, Norway, we examine how various bibliometric indicators correlate with evaluation ratings given by expert committees. The analysis shows positive but relatively weak correlat...

Citation distributions are extremely skewed. This paper addresses the following question: To what extent are national citation indicators influenced by a small minority of highly cited articles? This question has not been studied before at the level of national indicators. Using the scientific production of Norway as a case, we find that the averag...

Highly cited articles are very different from ‘ordinary’ cited articles. Typically, they are authored by a large number of scientists, often involving international collaboration. The majority of the papers represent regular journal articles (81%), although review articles (12%) are over-represented compared to the national average. The citation cu...

This study investigates the role of self-citation in the scientific production of Norway (1981-1996). More than 45,000 publications have been analysed. Using a three-year citation window we find that 36% of all citations represent author self-citations. However, this percentage is decreasing when citations are traced for longer periods. We find the...

This paper addresses two related issues regarding the validity of bibliometric indicators for the assessment of national performance within a particular scientific field. Firstly, the representativeness of a journal-based subject classification; and secondly, the completeness of the database coverage. Norwegian publishing in microbiology was chosen...

To analyse the relationship between research group size and scientific productivity within the highly cooperative research environment characteristic of contemporary biomedical science, an investigation of Norwegian Microbiology was undertaken. By an author-gated retrieval from ISI's database National Science Indicators on Diskette (NSIOD), of jour...

This presentation will focus on the use of current research information systems (CRIS) for analysing research output. During the last decades bibliometric indicators have to an increasing extent been employed in science-policy processes and research evaluations. Such indicators normally rely on data provided by Institute for Scientific Information...

In this study, national and international collaboration at the University of Bergen is analysed. The study is based on CRIS data which enable us to obtain a complete overview of the collaboration profile as reflected in co-authorships of scientific and scholarly publications. The applied data set includes all types of scientific and scholarly publi...