A national-scale cross-time analysis of university research performance

Research policies in the more developed nations are ever more oriented towards the introduction of productivity incentives and competition mechanisms intended to increase efficiency in research institutions. Assessments of the effects of these policy interventions on public research activity often neglect the normal, inherent variation in the performance of research institutions over time. In this work, we propose a cross-time bibliometric analysis of research performance by all Italian universities in two consecutive periods (2001–2003 and 2004–2008) not affected by national policy interventions. Findings show that productivity and impact increased at the level of individual scientists. At the level of university, significant variation in the rank was observed.