An analysis of the dynamics of British academic science

We analysed the ranking and market share dynamics of main British universities based on their research output production (publications and citations). The data that we analysed is dominated very much by research output in natural and medical sciences. We found that rankings based on citation counts are less variable than rankings based on publication counts. While ranking dynamics provides a coarse grained picture of the dynamics, the analysis of market share dynamics reveals more details of the mechanisms driving these dynamic processes. We suggest that most research output is produced in mature sciences producing normal science, and that this explains to a good extent the changes in market shares that we measured. We also suggest that having groups developing revolutionary science is critical for universities with large research output to keep their market share and for smaller universities to increase their market share rapidly