An initial bibliometric mapping of six higher education institutions undergoing structural changes

Abstract

One objective of the Structural Reform introduced in Norwegian higher education in 2015 is to promote high quality of research and contribute to more academic environments performing at a high international level. Higher education institutions differ with regard to research capacity and in the volume of research carried out. This is reflected, amongst others, in the amount of funding and in the number of academic staff and scientific and scholarly publications. During the period between 2011 and 2019, NTNU, HVL, HINN, USN, Nord Univ and UiT all increased their publication volume, both when measured in number of publications and in the number of publication points. The general pattern is that the largest institutions have the lowest growth rates. Several of the smaller institutions have very high growth rates, which may reflect increased research ambitions and time devoted to such activities at these institutions. Furthermore, the institutions differ in terms of discipline profile and specialization. Scientific productivity is also very skewed at the level of individuals. In 2019, one quarter of the publishing personnel published more than 1.5 publication points and there were only minor differences in this proportion across institutions. In terms of citation impact, all the examined institutions contribute to high impact research, but overall, the figures are lower than the national average. Large differences prevail at the level of subject fields.