Performance Indicators of Italian CNR Institutes

Felix de Moya Anegón

This is the third post in our series on performance indicators of government organizations and leading national scientific institutions (National Research Councils and Science Academies). After the analysis of Spanish CSIC and German Max Planck Society we now focus on the Italian Cosiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche CNR and its research institutes. Mainly funded by public funds, the Italian leading scientific institution is a government agency with 107 Institutes set throughout the country (four of them have been discontinued) and grouped into 11 thematic departments. In 2009, the scientific output attributable to CNR Institutes represented more than 10% of Italian scientific output. Again, we present in this post a table (in PDF format) that, based on Elsevier’s Scopus database, shows scientometric indicators of research output, citation impact and international collaboration related to CNR Institutes. Its main goal is not to rank the institutes, but to highlight some of the differential characteristics in regard to the research outcomes achieved by these centers.

In order to show trends, the table includes three consecutive 5-year periods (2003-2007, 2004-2008 and 2005-2009). Ordering criteria is the output of the CNR Institutes during the period 2005-2009. The institutes are color-marked to indicate which ones have Normalized Impact (NI) values higher than the NI average over all CNR Institutes, which surpass Italian NI average (but fall below CNR average) and which ones fall below Italian NI average.

The following table provide some background information by showing the same four indicators and periods that you will find in the PDF report, but referred to the CNR entire organisation and to Italy:

The indicators

Output

The output or number of scientific papers published in scholarly journals reveals the ability of an institution to produce scientific knowledge. Output values are affected by institution sizes and research profiles, among others factors. The Output indicator forms the basis for more complex metrics. At co-authored publications a score is assigned to each contributing institution through the author’s institutional address.

International Collaboration IC (%)

This indicator shows the ability of institutions to create international research links through the output ratio that has been produced in collaboration with foreign institutions. The values are computed by analyzing the institution’s output whose affiliations include more than one country address.

Normalized Impact NI

Normalized Impact scores indicate the scientific impact that institutions have over the scientific community. In order to obtain a fair measurement of such impact, its calculation removes the influence due to institutions’ size and research profile making it ideal for comparing research performance. Normalized Impact values show the ratio between the average scientific impact of an institution and the world average impact of publications of the same time frame, document type and subject category. The values are expressed in percentages and show the relationship of the institution’s average impact to the world average, which is 1, –i.e. a score of 0.8 means the institution is cited 20% below world average and 1.3 means the institution is cited 30% above world average. Normalized Impact is computed using the methodology established by the Karolinska Intitutet in Sweden where it is named “Item oriented field normalized citation score average”. The long name used is because the normalization of the citation values is done on an individual article level. Further information on the methodology at Bibliometric Handbook for Karolinska Institutet.

High Quality Publications Q1(%)

Ratio of publications an institution publishes in the world most influential scholarly journals. Journals considered for this indicator are those ranked in the first quartile (25%) in their categories as ordered by SCImago Journal Rank SJR indicator.