Exploring the h-index at the institutional level: A practical application in world university rankings

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to evaluate the scientific performance of universities by extending the application of the h-index from the-individual to the institutional level. A ranking of the world's top universities based on their h-index scores was produced. The geographic distribution of the highly ranked universities by continent and by country was also analysed. Design/approach/methodology - This study uses bibliometric analysis to rank the universities. In order to calculate their h-index the numbers of papers and citations in each university were gathered from Web of Science, including the Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index. Authority control dealing with variations in university names ensured the accuracy of each university's number of published journal papers and the subsequent statistics of their citations. Findings - It was found that a high correlation exists between the h-index ranking generated in this study and that produced by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The results confirm the validity of the h-index in the assessment of research performance at the university level. Originality/value - The h-index has been used to evaluate research performance at the institutional level in several recent studies; however these studies evaluated institutions' performance only in certain disciplines or in a single country. This paper measures the research performance of universities all over the world, and the applicability of the h-index at the institutional level was validated by calculating the correlation between the ranking result of the h-index and the ranking by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.