A first approach to the classification of the top 500 world universities by their disciplinary characteristics using scientometrics

Summary

In this study, the top 500 world universities are classified into 21 types according to their disciplinary characteristics using clustering method. The indicators used to represent the disciplinary characteristics of an institution are the proportion of publications in six broader disciplinary areas: Arts/Humanities & Social Sciences, Natural Sciences & Mathematics, Engineering/Technology & Computer Sciences, Life Sciences, Clinical Medicine, and Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Sciences. Institutions have been classified into types of having focus in a disciplinary group, having priority in a disciplinary group, having orientation in a disciplinary group, and balanced. The distribution of different types of institutions with respect to countries and ranks are analyzed.