Performance Indicators
The SciK-Health project aims to develop a multidimensional framework to assess the research performance of Italian Academic Health Science Centres (AHSCs).
By combining data from OpenAlex, Dimensions, and Altmetric, we identify key metrics across several dimensions, including bibliometrics, funding, innovation, and societal engagement.
This section describes the indicators currently adopted to evaluate the scientific productivity, impact, collaboration patterns, thematic focus, and talent distribution within AHSCs.
📚 Bibliometric Dimension
🔹 Productivity
Research output is measured by the total number of scientific articles published by each AHSC.
We also consider authorship patterns through:
- Average number of articles per internal author
- Share of internal authors in first, last, and corresponding positions
- Proportion of Open Access publications
- Number of single-authored articles
These indicators reflect both institutional research engagement and the level of independent scholarship.
🔹 Impact
Citation-based indicators are used to assess research influence:
- Average citations per article
- Normalized citation scores (field-weighted)
- Share of publications in the top 10% journals (Scopus 2023)
- Citation trends over the past decade
Together, these metrics provide insights into both short- and long-term academic visibility.
🔹 Collaboration
Collaboration is captured through:
- Percentage of articles with international co-authorship
- Cross-institutional affiliations among authors
- Average number of authors per article
These indicators reveal the extent of networking, interdisciplinary effort, and participation in multi-center research projects.
🔹 Topics
Thematic orientation is analyzed using:
- MeSH terms and primary research topics
- Bigrams from titles and abstracts
- Network similarity of research profiles across AHSCs
These approaches help identify scientific specialization and thematic convergence/divergence among institutions.
🔹 Talent
Scientific talent is assessed through equity and leadership indicators:
- Gini coefficient on publication activity (equal and fractional)
- Identification of top contributors based on volume and impact
These metrics shed light on internal talent distribution and the presence of high-performing researchers.
💡 Industrial Impact & Research Innovation
Innovation capacity is assessed through indicators based on patents, which serve as a proxy for knowledge transfer and technological advancement within AHSCs.
Key indicators include:
- Number of patents registered per institution
- Average number of jurisdictions in which each patent is filed (as a proxy for market reach)
- Classification of patents by technological domain (e.g., medical devices, pharmaceuticals)
- Identification of top inventors, based on volume and relevance of patents filed
These indicators provide insights into each AHSC’s role in translating research into applied technologies and highlight leadership in innovation-intensive domains.
🧪 Clinical Research Activity
Clinical trials represent a critical interface between scientific discovery and patient care. They reflect an institution’s capacity to translate research into evidence-based interventions.
Key indicators include:
- Number of newly initiated clinical trials per AHSC
- Average funding amount per clinical trial (as a proxy for resource allocation)
- Distribution by trial phase (e.g., Phase I–IV), to distinguish early-stage vs. late-stage research engagement
- Collaboration metrics, capturing partnerships between AHSCs, healthcare providers, and external research centers
These indicators highlight the role of AHSCs in driving medical innovation and their level of integration between academic research and clinical application.
💶 Funding and Grants
Research funding plays a central role in sustaining scientific activity and expanding institutional capabilities.
Key indicators include:
- Number of competitive research grants awarded to each AHSC
- Total funding amount obtained, from both national and international sources
- Grant success rate, calculated as the proportion of submitted proposals that received funding
These metrics reflect the institution’s ability to secure external resources, indicating both research capacity and competitiveness in the funding landscape.
🌍 Social and Digital Dimension
This dimension evaluates the public and policy-level visibility of scientific research produced by AHSCs, using altmetrics as a complementary perspective to traditional citation-based indicators.
Key indicators include:
These indicators help quantify the societal resonance of research output, highlighting the extent to which AHSC-based publications are visible and engaged with outside of the academic community.