La producción y colaboración científica por área temática de las Universidades públicas españolas

Due to the growing interest in the evaluation systems of scientific activity, especially in university rankings, by the scientific community and government organs responsible for science policy, it is necessary to have tools to show what the different dimensions involved in these evaluation processes, especially in the case of universities, which have different profiles. For this reason, compared to synthetic indicators, it is considered more appropriate to have a battery of indicators grouped by areas of knowledge, in order to avoid comparative grievances and get as fairly as possible among evaluation objects. We present some preliminary results, by subject area, in relation to scientific production and the degree of international collaboration of Spanish public universities. The data were collected from those contained in the observatory IUNE, showing the scientific activity of the Spanish Universities grouped into 6 major areas: Arts and Humanities (ART) Life Sciences (BIO) Experimental Science (EXP ), Architecture, Engineering and Computer Science (ENG); Medicine and Pharmacology (MED) and Social Sciences (SOC). The time period studied covered the years 2002-2011. These results show that the area of Experimental Sciences (EXP) has the highest scientific activity, representing approximately 40% of total public university system, ahead of ING and MED, with percentages representing about 25% each one. These documents are published in international collaboration in different proportions, with the area of EXP with 43% of this type of document, which stands over others, such as ING and MED whose average rates of international collaborative papers is about 30 %