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Scientometric analysis of relative performance in a key university in Romania

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Abstract

A scientometric analysis of the Babeş-Bolyai University in Romania is provided, highlighting the strong and the weak points with respect to a range of leading international universities and referencing to some extent to nation-wide data from several countries. Taken into account are such items as total number of publications, analyses per subject area or per research field, number of citations, types of publications, Hirsch indexes, and books. Internationally, chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer science, religion, area studies, geology, paleontology, and public administration are identified as the most active areas. Nationally, a number of additional strong points are identified, such as psychology, history, and environmental sciences. The percentage of researchers with reasonably high activity (e.g., at least ~ one publication per year as indexed in major databases) is relatively low (~10 %), and the percentage with reasonably high international competitiveness (based on citation counts, number of publications, books indexed in international libraries) is at only ~2 %. The decisive factor controlling an exponential increase in publications since ~2000–2004 appears to have been a conservatively managed exponential increase of the national GDP and implicitly of the research budgets.

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Acknowledgments

Profs. Sorin Filipescu, Simion Simon and Daniel David are thanked for helpful discussions.

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Correspondence to Radu Silaghi-Dumitrescu.

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Silaghi-Dumitrescu, R., Sabau, A. Scientometric analysis of relative performance in a key university in Romania. Scientometrics 99, 463–474 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1232-8

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