Elsevier, publisher of scientific, technical and medical information, announced the results of its SciVal Spotlight Alternative Energy Research Leadership study. Analyzing the work of 3,000 research institutions world-wide, the study identifies the top 25 based on the number of alternative energy research papers produced in distinctive competencies (DCs).
Highlights of the findings were shared in a recent webcast, “Research Leadership Redefined: Measuring Performance in a Multidisciplinary Landscape.”
Distinctive competencies represent expertise in specific research areas. They reveal the degree to which institutions have constructed multidisciplinary networks within their organization focused on achieving specific breakthroughs. Indicating that research within the university is not being done in isolated silos, examining output in distinctive competencies offers a more accurate way of determining leadership in a given area than traditional measurement methods.
The following table ranks institutions based on the number of alternative energy research papers produced in DCs.
| INSTITUTION | COUNTRY |
TOTAL PAPERS |
| NASA Goddard Flight Space Center | USA | 309 |
| National Renewable Energy Laboratory | USA | 271 |
| Helmholtz Centre Berlin for Materials and Energy | Germany | 240 |
| Forschungszentrum Julich | Germany | 234 |
| Pennsylvania State University | USA | 168 |
| National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | USA | 121 |
| University of California, Irvine | USA | 101 |
| Osaka University | Japan | 97 |
| California Institute of Technology | USA | 97 |
| Harvard University | USA | 84 |
| Tsinghua University | China | 83 |
| Shanghai Jiaotong University | China | 81 |
| University of Colorado | USA | 80 |
| Imperial College, London | UK | 79 |
| Tohoku University | Japan | 71 |
| Eindhoven University of Technology | Netherlands | 69 |
| National Research Council of Canada | Canada | 66 |
| Nanyang Technological University | Singapore | 64 |
| National Cheng Kung University | Taiwan | 61 |
| University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | USA | 61 |
| Korea Institute of Science and Technology | Korea | 54 |
| University of Science and Technology of China | China | 54 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | USA | 53 |
| Los Alamos National Laboratory | USA | 52 |
| Kyoto University | Japan | 52 |
“As research becomes more multidisciplinary in nature, it is increasingly difficult to find actionable information with respect to output,” said Jay Katzen, managing director of Elsevier’s Academic & Government Products, and one of the webcast presenters. “In today’s uncertain economic times, it is even more critical that academic executives get the right insight to make strategic decisions on everything from funding allocations to hiring.”
“There is a common misperception that the most significant research is being conducted at only a handful of top-ranked universities,” added Dick Klavans, senior development adviser for Elsevier A&G and also a presenter at the webcast. “There is a need to look beyond total paper counts as leaders in specific subtopics exist within all levels of the university rankings. Examining distinctive competencies shines a light on overlooked output and unrecognized leaders.”
Based on the top 50 institutions globally, the study also analyzes country output in the three main alternative energy sub-topics or topic groups including solar/photovoltaic, fuel cells and environmentally related areas (such as efficiency, renewable energy, biomass, wind, etc.).