Measuring and assessing research excellence: challenges and solutions

Research quality is the cornerstone of modern science; it aids in the understanding of reputational differences among scientific and academic institutions. Traditionally, scientific activity is measured by a set of indicators and well-established bibliometric techniques based on the number of academic papers published in top-ranked journals or on the number of citations of these papers. Although research excellence is generally agreed to be desirable, it is rarely defined in enough detail to measure it, which may render the pursuit of research excellence meaningless or impractical in terms of meeting measurable targets. So that we made an exhaustive bibliographic revision of the most recent papers, in order to collect all advanced bibliometric indicators to unambiguously describe and establish research excellence.