Scientometric analysis of national university research performance in analytical chemistry on the basis of academic publications: the case study of Italy

This article presents a method for the evaluation of the national university research performance in analytical chemistry and applies it to data obtained from the Italian university system. In February 2009 a census was carried out of the papers published by (full) professors (professori di prima fascia) in the scientific sector of analytical chemistry. The survey identified 8529 papers by 80 professors (65 senior, professori ordinari, and 15 junior, professori straordinari) published in 630 journals; 86% of the papers were by senior professors. 94% of the total were published in journals included in the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) database, and the majority, 55%, in journals included in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) category of 'Chemistry, Analytical' (CA), covering 53, i.e. 76%, out of the 70 journals included in this category. The average number of papers published per professor was 106.6 (min–max 34–364). Evaluation of the quality of publications was obtained from the impact factor (IF) available for the year 2007 in JCR for all ISI journals. For journals not included in the CA category a normalized IF was used, according to a maximum scaling procedure, with the maximum set at the highest value of this category. In this way all IFs were rescaled to the scale of the 'Chemistry, Analytical' category. From all the publications retrieved a three-modal distribution of the IF was obtained with modes (in order of importance) at about 0.8, 2.8 and 5.2 respectively and with an average value of 1.969 (median 1.562). Distinguishing between senior and junior professors it was observed that a substantial increase in the impact factor occurred when passing from senior (average value 1.908, median 1.562) to junior professors (average 2.370, median 2.632). The observed improvement between senior and junior professors was reasonably interpreted as dependent on selection of higher reputation and high-impact factor journals by junior professors, with respect to senior professors, when publishing their works, presumably corresponding to higher quality research and results in more recent years.