An Analysis of the Trends of Scholarly Publications by Major Universities in Asia and in Korea

Abstract

This study aims to develop a strategy by Seoul National University for a systematic analysis of the trends of scholarly publication by highly ranked universities in Asia and in Korea. Important considerations of this standardized process of analysis include characteristics of subject fields, types of published articles, and search strategy on various databases. Times Higher Education (THE) World university Rankings, QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World University Ranking and university ranking services by Korean newspapers adopt their own assessment schemes which are mixtures of several objective and subjective parameters on different weight scales. These different processes by third party reviewers are neither standardized nor useful for analytical judgment in different perspectives. Moreover this data is used simply to compare one university from the other without sufficient consideration given to each of the particular conditions of the many different organizations. Our approach is to produce long term data on trends of various academic fields or organizations and diverse types of articles by searching for and collecting information using a large database. Another important approach is to request the academic faculty to analyze the collected data on their own so that their analysis is based on their understanding of academic topics and current practical issues. Increase of research information is one of key movements in scholarly publishing. The total number of articles added in 2011 to the Web of Science database was 1,740,976 which was 1.54 times increase from 1966. The total number of articles by Korean submitters in 2011 represented an increase of 6.20 times. The same indicator was 11.00 for China, 1.30 for the U.S. and 1.69 for Germany. The proportion of Korean articles among all articles across the world was 0.72% in 1966, which has since increased to 2.90% in 2011. The number of research papers published in 2010 by Seoul National University was 6,098 articles which was a 5.2 times increase from 1966. The University of Tokyo, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Seoul National University, Kyoto University, National University of Singapore were the most highly ranked universities in this respective order based on research papers published in 2010 on the Web of Science. However, on the SCOPUS database, there was a different order, with Peking University followed in order by University of Tokyo, Tsinghua University, National Taiwan University, Seoul National University and Kyoto University. These increases of published articles by universities can be understood to be an increase in the percentage of all article contributions by universities during the same year. This increase in percentage was the highest at Tsinghua University among 20 universities in Asia, followed by Seoul National University and National Taiwan University. Higher numbers of research papers among Korean universities were observed at Seoul National University, Yonsei University, Korea University, Sungkyunkwan University and KAIST in this respective order. The rate of contribution increased at Korea University and Sungkyunkwan University but remained stationary at Yonsei University and Hanyang University. The proportion decreased from 16% to 14% at Seoul National University. The proportion by KAIST dropped from 15% (1966) to 5% (2011). The increase of research articles between 1966 and 2011 among the colleges of Seoul National University were as follows: the College of Agriculture Life Sciences (13.54 times), the College of Engineering (13.08 times), the College of Medicine (10.44 times), the College of Dentistry (5.10 times), the College of Pharmacy (3.94 times) and the College of Natural Sciences (2.83 times). Among the departments of College of Natural Sciences, higher numbers of research papers were recorded in the departments of Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry, Biological Science, Earth and Environmental Sciences in this descending order. Among the departments of the College of Engineering and the departments of Materials Science and Engineering-- Chemical and Biological Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering showed higher numbers of research papers published. The Department of Food and Animal Biotechnology (Department of Applied Biology and Chemistry) showed higher numbers of research papers published out of the departments of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Among the 251 subject categories of the Web of Sciences, categories of higher number which were increasing in trend were those of the Chemistry Multidisciplinary, Material Science, Neuroscience, Pharmacology and Pharmacy, Electrical Engineering, Medicine, General Internal, Physics Applied, Surgery, Oncology and Cardiac Cardiovascular categories. Four subject fields showed a high but stationary number-- these being Biotechnology and Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, Immunology and History. Data on published scholarly articles by faculty members can be obtained either