Multi-authoring and its impact on university rankings: a case study of CERN effect on Turkish universities

ÇAKIR M. P., ACARTÜRK C., Alkan S., Akbulut U.

STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION, cilt.44, sa.6, ss.1052-1068, 2019 (SSCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 44 Sayı: 6
  • Basım Tarihi: 2019
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1080/03075079.2017.1414780
  • Dergi Adı: STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1052-1068
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Multi-authored articles, academic performance, university rankings, ranking indicators, academic publishing, SCIENTIFIC COLLABORATION, WORLD-REPORT, DESIGN
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Multi-authoring has been gaining popularity since the foundation of academic publishers. Today we observe a global trend in favor of multi-authoring. On the other hand, in certain domains, such as CERN collaborations in physics, multi-authoring has a different connotation than other domains. The number of co-authors may be above 5000, an all-time record in the history of academic publishing. CERN collaborations have been accomplishing one of the most significant achievements in physics, as well; therefore, the collaborations produce highly cited articles. Highly cited, multi-authored articles have influenced university rankings in the past decade, due to the distribution of the citations per affiliated institution. In the present study, we analyze the influence of multi-authored articles on ranking methodologies. Our findings reveal that the presence of multi-authored CERN articles have a significant impact on all bibliometric ranking indicators, and consequently on the ranking positions of the institutions worldwide.