We are releasing here a small post with some interesting indicators that can help contribute to shed light on the performance of the Spanish Scientific System, these specifically are related to publicly-funded universities.
The table is available as a pdf and can be downloaded here: Science Indicators of Spanish Public Universities.

The list below is a description of the indicators you will find on the table.

  • Normalized Impact (NI): (ordering criteria) weighted citation average of universities. By normalizing citation counts for differences among fields this indicator represents, in an indirect way, the Average Scientific Quality of the universities. Analysis Period: 2005-2009
  • Weighted Scientific Production (WSP): It is the result of assessing each scientific paper by its Normalized Impact and then adding them up for an entire institution. In this way, each paper counts higher than 1 when cited above world average (in its field, type and year) and lower than 1 when cited below. Analysis Period: 2008
  • Equivalent Full-Time Faculty Productivity (EFTF-P): Scientific Output by Equivalent Full-Time Faculty. Year 2008.
  • Total Expenditure in Research (TER): Combination of the different Research Expenditure Items at a University. Year 2008.
  • Expenditure per Paper (EP): Average expenditure per published scientific paper at a University (considering its Weighted Scientific Production). Year 2008.
  • Total Equivalent Full-Time Faculty (EFTF): Number of Full-Time Academics by converting part-time to full-time equivalents. Year 2008.
  • Expenditure per Equivalent Full-Time Faculty (TER/EFTF): Relationship between Total Expenditure in Research (TER) and Total Equivalent Full-Time Faculty (EFTF). Year 2008.

Overall thoughts about Normalized Impact

The evolution of the Normalized Impact of Spanish universities highlights the overall average impact improvement in Spanish system, as well as a slight decrease in top-notch universities. It remains true that the whole Public System is balanced and comparable with scientifically developed countries, specifically when compared with some English-speaking countries. More than 75% of Spanish public universities are above the world average impact, however none of them reach impact average levels higher than 50% of the world average.

The following chart relates the academics’ productivity average and the Normalized Impact of universities (columns EFTF-P and NI in the table) and shows that there exists a clear positive relationship between these variables. In other words, in those universities where academics’ quantitative output in terms of scientific publications is higher, their qualitative outcomes are higher too. This means that as faculty’s publication activity at universities becomes more intense, the average quality of its outcomes reach higher peaks, among other things as a consequence of the higher chances of scientific synergies that take place within the institutions.