The determinants of research performance in European universities: a large scale multilevel analysis

The paper examines the research performance of European universities in a disaggregated way, using a large array of indicators from Scopus publications, including indicators of volume (number of articles; number of citations) and indicators of quality (percentage of publications in top 10% and top 25% SNIP journals; percentage of citations from top 10% and top 25% journals). These indicators are considered dependent variables in a multi-level estimation framework, in which research performance in a scientific area depends on variables at the level of university and at the level of the external regional environment. The area examined is Medicine, for the 2007-2010 period. The paper exploits for the first time the integration of publication data with the census of European universities (ETER). A large number of hypotheses are tested and discussed.