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Uncertain research country rankings. Should we continue producing uncertain rankings?

Alonso Rodríguez-Navarro

Alonso Rodríguez-Navarro

Departamento de Biotecnología-Biología Vegetal, Universidad Politécnica de MadridMadrid, Spain
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Rodríguez-Navarro, Alonso
  
May 13, 2025
Uncertain research country rankings. Should we continue producing uncertain rankings?'s Cover Image
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Article Category: Research Papers
Published Online: May 13, 2025
Page range: 161 - 182
Received: Mar 21, 2025
Accepted: Apr 24, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2025-0030
Keywords
© 2025 Alonso Rodríguez-Navarro, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Figure 1.

Country versus global ranks of domestic papers. Comparison of actual global ranks (open circles) with those calculated for the power law defined by P and Ptop 10% (closed circles). Publication window: 2014–2017; citation window: 2019–2022.
Country versus global ranks of domestic papers. Comparison of actual global ranks (open circles) with those calculated for the power law defined by P and Ptop 10% (closed circles). Publication window: 2014–2017; citation window: 2019–2022.

Figure 2.

Country versus global ranks of domestic papers. Comparison of actual global ranks (open circles) with those calculated for the power law defined by Ptop 10% and Ptop 1% (closed circles). Publication window: 2014–2017; citation window: 2019– 2022.
Country versus global ranks of domestic papers. Comparison of actual global ranks (open circles) with those calculated for the power law defined by Ptop 10% and Ptop 1% (closed circles). Publication window: 2014–2017; citation window: 2019– 2022.

Figure 3.

Histogram with logarithmic binning of citations to world publications in the scientific topics of solar cells, semiconductors, and immunity (from left to right). Blue bars correspond to a lognormal synthetic series to guide the eye. Publication window: 2014–2017; citation window: 2019–2022.
Histogram with logarithmic binning of citations to world publications in the scientific topics of solar cells, semiconductors, and immunity (from left to right). Blue bars correspond to a lognormal synthetic series to guide the eye. Publication window: 2014–2017; citation window: 2019–2022.

Figure 4.

Histogram with logarithmic binning of citations to publications from the UK, Japan, and South Korea on the scientific topic of solar cells. Publication window: 2014–2017; citation window: 2019–2022.
Histogram with logarithmic binning of citations to publications from the UK, Japan, and South Korea on the scientific topic of solar cells. Publication window: 2014–2017; citation window: 2019–2022.

Figure 5.

Plots of Ptop 5%/Ptop 5% and Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% versus Ptop 10%/P in selected universities. Data from the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2023, means of four evaluation periods, and fractional counting. a and b panels: “Physical and engineering sciences;” c and d panels:” Biomedical and health sciences.” Evaluation periods and selection of universities are described in the text.
Plots of Ptop 5%/Ptop 5% and Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% versus Ptop 10%/P in selected universities. Data from the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2023, means of four evaluation periods, and fractional counting. a and b panels: “Physical and engineering sciences;” c and d panels:” Biomedical and health sciences.” Evaluation periods and selection of universities are described in the text.

Figure 6.

Local versus global ranks of US domestic papers published by the universities of Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in immunology. Comparison of the actual ranks of the papers of these universities with the ranks calculated for the power laws defined by P and Ptop 10% (left panel), and Ptop 10% and Ptop1% (right panel).
Local versus global ranks of US domestic papers published by the universities of Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in immunology. Comparison of the actual ranks of the papers of these universities with the ranks calculated for the power laws defined by P and Ptop 10% (left panel), and Ptop 10% and Ptop1% (right panel).

Classification of universities attending to the variation of the Ptop 10%/P, Ptop 5%/Ptop 50%, and Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% ratios: stable (Type A), decreasing (Type B), or increasing (Type C)_ Field of Biomedical and health sciences_

University Country Ptop 10%/P Ptop 5%/Ptop 50% Ptop 1%/Ptop 10%
Type A
Northeastern University, USA United States 0.132 0.131 0.139
University of Arizona United States 0.100 0.090 0.091
Purdue University, West Lafayette United States 0.100 0.092 0.090
The University of Warwick United Kingdom 0.142 0.138 0.152
University of East Anglia United Kingdom 0.146 0.132 0.129
Peking University China 0.086 0.079 0.080
Xiamen University China 0.081 0.075 0.074
University of Milan Italy 0.104 0.096 0.100
The University of Tokyo Japan 0.081 0.084 0.089
Type B
Rockefeller University United States 0.326 0.282 0.182
Massachusetts Institute of Technology United States 0.298 0.260 0.192
Princeton University United States 0.267 0.236 0.173
Yale University United States 0.225 0.182 0.129
University of California, Berkeley United States 0.214 0.185 0.138
California Institute of Technology United States 0.213 0.185 0.150
University of Oxford United Kingdom 0.208 0.178 0.133
University of Cambridge United Kingdom 0.208 0.174 0.130
Tsinghua University China 0.137 0.126 0.115
Soochow University China 0.071 0.061 0.046
University of Toronto Canada 0.139 0.127 0.107
Universität Hamburg Germany 0.114 0.099 0.085
Flinders University Australia 0.111 0.107 0.082
Type C
Indiana University, Bloomington United States 0.109 0.103 0.128
Kiel University Germany 0.109 0.106 0.123
Tohoku University Japan 0.062 0.071 0.078

Basic description of scientific publications in terms of P, Ptop 10%/P, and Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% in 18 selected cases_

Country Solar cells Semiconductors Immunity
P Ptop 10%/P Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% P Ptop 10%/P Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% P Ptop 10%/P Ptop 1%/Ptop 10%
Global 61,202 58,081 42,586
Germany 1,834 0.077 0.063 1,748 0.065 0.061 1,177 0.091 0.056
India 3,138 0.052 N/C 3,056 0.046 0.056 962 0.021 N/C
Japan 2,742 0.059 0.092 3,167 0.058 0.087 1,491 0.057 0.106
South Korea 4,193 0.068 0.102 2,668 0.066 0.068 1,088 0.053 N/C
UK 892 0.182 0.204 810 0.115 0.204 893 0.103 0.076
USA 5,474 0.146 0.141 6,004 0.149 0.111 7,946 0.145 0.122

Number of universities that belong to the three types described in Tables 2 and 3_

Country Physical sciences and engineering Biomedical and health sciences
Type A Type B Type C Type A Type B Type C
Australia 4 12 0 7 9 0
Belgium 2 1 0 3 4 0
Brazil 1 0 0 0 0 1
Canada 7 0 2 6 5 0
China 23 50 1 9 21 0
Denmark 0 4 0 3 0 0
Finland 0 2 0 1 1 0
France 9 2 2 7 6 1
Germany 14 9 2 20 3 2
Greece 0 1 0 1 0 0
India 0 0 2 0 0 0
Iran 1 2 1 0 0 1
Ireland 1 0 0 0 3 0
Israel 0 3 1 3 1 0
Italy 7 0 0 5 10 0
Japan 2 0 6 4 0 1
Malaysia 0 0 1 0 0 0
Netherlands 3 4 0 2 7 0
New Zealand 0 0 1 2 0 0
Norway 0 1 0 2 1 0
Poland 0 0 1 0 0 1
Portugal 3 0 0 1 0 1
Singapore 0 2 0 1 0 0
South Korea 3 4 4 3 1 0
Spain 3 1 2 5 2 0
Sweden 5 1 0 2 3 0
Switzerland 1 4 0 1 6 0
Taiwan 0 0 2 2 1 0
United Kingdom 7 15 1 8 19 0
United States 17 48 3 36 61 4
Total 113 166 32 134 164 12

Classification of universities attending to the variation of the Ptop 10%/P, Ptop 5%/Ptop 50%, and Ptop 1%/Ptop 10% ratios: stable (Type A), decreasing (Type B), or increasing (Type C)_ Field of Physical sciences and engineering_

University Country Ptop 10%/P Ptop 5%/Ptop 50% Ptop 1%/Ptop 10%
Type A
Pennsylvania State University United States 0.138 0.129 0.117
Florida State University United States 0.124 0.121 0.130
University of Virginia United States 0.121 0.118 0.118
University of Nottingham United Kingdom 0.141 0.125 0.120
University of Exeter United Kingdom 0.127 0.108 0.125
Chongqing University China 0.113 0.106 0.109
Hohai University China 0.103 0.113 0.089
University of Queensland Australia 0.140 0.131 0.151
University of Bordeaux France 0.112 0.109 0.118
Type B
Harvard University United States 0.254 0.221 0.170
Stanford University United States 0.249 0.201 0.160
Massachusetts Institute of Technology United States 0.235 0.196 0.155
Yale University United States 0.225 0.182 0.129
Princeton University United States 0.211 0.177 0.125
University of Colorado, Boulder United States 0.168 0.165 0.104
Imperial College London United Kingdom 0.161 0.135 0.120
University of Oxford United Kingdom 0.167 0.146 0.124
University of Cambridge United Kingdom 0.170 0.145 0.129
Lanzhou University China 0.098 0.074 0.052
Fuzhou University China 0.127 0.121 0.107
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium 0.149 0.136 0.113
Heidelberg University Germany 0.147 0.127 0.116
Type C
Nagoya University Japan 0.073 0.081 0.120
Tohoku University Japan 0.075 0.082 0.103
Drexel University United States 0.149 0.145 0.183
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