An overview of scientific productivity of Spanish Universities

In the present work, the scientific productivity of Spanish universities is examined. The specific objectives of the study are the following: a) to know the place of Spanish universities in the Academic Ranking of World Universities; b) to explore the relation between the international criteria used in the Academic Ranking of World Universities and several Spanish criteria, such as "tramos de investigacion", number of doctoral programmes with special mention of quality and the scientific productivity measured through numbers of doctoral theses; c) to analyse the relation between the proportion of professors in the Spanish universities (<< Profesores Titulares de Universidad -PTU >> and << CatedrAticos de Universidad -CU >>) and the percentage of "eminence of the research career >>. To reach these objectives, a descriptive study based on the analysis of documents was carried out. The data were supplied by different institutions: the "Academic Ranking of World Universities", the << National Agency of Quality Assessment >> and the << Consejo de Coordinacion Universitaria >>. The results show that Spain is the twelfth country with higher number of universities according to the International Ranking. Also, it is found that the international scientific productivity criteria are closely related to the national productivity criteria. Lastly, a significant correlation between the proportion of PTU/CU professors and the academic productivity has been found, showing that the universities with a higher proportion of CU professors have a lower scientific productivity according to the measure of << eminence of the research career >> and vice versa.