| 15.09.2017

Hanken on top in Nordic research comparison

Hanken performs well in an independent research comparison among 172 Nordic higher education institutions conducted by NordForsk.

Hanken tops the Nordic comparison in the field of business studies and economics within the share of highly cited publications (17 %), putting Hanken 70 % over the average, and within average citation rate (1,66).

The report Comparing research at Nordic higher education institutions using bibliometric indicators: Covering the years 1999-2014 compiled by NordForsk, describes research performance in a more nuanced way than many international university rankings. For example, the report fractionalises publications and citations based on each organisation’s share of the author addresses in the publication. In addition, the study excludes self-citations.

- Citation distributions are typically skewed and a few publications tend to receive most of the citations. The issue of contribution to highly cited papers is therefore interesting to investigate, in addition to field normalised average scores, explains Library Director Tua Hindersson-Söderholm.

The report uses two main measures that complement each other: the average citation rate gives a measure of how the whole organisation is performing, whereas the share of top 10 publications identifies researchers, who contribute substantially to research of wide interest and impact. The indicator “Share of top 10 publications” is calculated by dividing the number of publications from an organisation that are among the 10 per cent most cited in the world, with the total number of publications from the same organisation

- The first gives an overall picture of the research quality of an organisation as a whole; the other targets the excellence of the organisation. In general, the share of highly cited papers is a more stable indicator than the average citation rate, since it is not so easily affected by single, extremely highly cited publications, Hindersson-Söderholm explains.

According to the report, Hanken shows remarkable development with both of the main indicators. Even though the total publication output of Hanken is low in absolute numbers, Hanken shows a steady rise. According to the authors, the explanation for this is that in a small university with a suitably limited focus, it is possible to achieve rapid change

- We see this as a result of our efforts to reward top publications and have this way been able to increase both the productivity and impact of our researchers, says Timo Korkeamäki, dean of Research at Hanken.

Download the report here:

http://bit.ly/2gWQEn9

More information:

Timo Korkeamäki, Dean of Research, timo.korkeamaki@hanken.fi

Tua Hindersson-Söderholm, Library Director, tua.hindersson@hanken.fi