I am trying to calculate the "research output" of 4 leading
universities. 3 are in the US (Harvard, MIT, Cleveland), one is in the
UK (Imperial College). I am trying to find out how much research each
one publishes each year. Is there a central database of academic
publishing I can interrogate? Or is no central database? Or maybe one
by subject area? Any help appreciated.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 20 Jun 2005 09:12 PDT

Such databases do exist, though they tend to be pretty pricey, and
mostly available through universities.  Do you have access to a
university library (and if so, which one) or are you on your own?

pafalafa-ga

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Clarification of Question by parallel54-ga on 20 Jun 2005 21:51 PDT

Hi there,

I'm in the UK.

Can get access to Manchester Library (Commercial Library). May also be
able to get to the British Library in London. Would be good to assess
what they have ahead of any visit there.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 21 Jun 2005 12:28 PDT

//54-ga,

The comment below mentions the same datasource I had in mind.  ISI has
a variety of data products that rank the top research institutions
based on numbers of papers, numbers of citations, fastest increase in
citations, etc.

You can get a feel for some of their products here:


http://in-cites.com/institutions/2005menu.html


I didn't see any public libraries that carry this database.  You might
have to check out a local university library to see what's available,
or ask the assistance of a librarian knowledgeable about this
particular tool.

If I learn enough about ISI (or other tools) to figure out how to
calculate the overall "research output" as you put it, I'll be sure to
get back to you with a follow-up comment or (even better!) an answer
to your question.

pafalafa-ga

There is a singularly useful product from Thomson, a leader in
information managament with a special emphasis on science research.
The product is called the ISI Web of Knowledge that conprehensively
organizes information about trends and influential research from
regions, universities and individuals. A major feature is that it
allows you to rank universities by research output and proportional
influence, based on things like citation ranking. One example from
their In-Cites citation indexing service is in the relative influence
of universities, seen here:

http://in-cites.com/institutions/mic_1994-2004.html

According to this, Harvard University tops the list. 

 Here is the link to the brochure for the Web of Knowledge

http://www.thomsonscientific.com/media/scpdf/wok-factsheet_en.pdf

Frequently, major journals such as Genetics, Proceedings of the
National Academies of Sciences, Psychological Review and so forth will
publish articles of researchers who have conducted their own analysis
of output and influence of various universities. Try to search for
these using Ingenta www. ingenta.com or EbscoHost www.ebscohost.com.
This should be helpful, thanks.