1. Introduction

Research is essential for the development of a country. It has already been seen during the Second World War; the main advances were made thanks to the scientists [1]. One of these advances, for example, is the development of the atomic pump thanks to the work of Albert Einstein [2].

According to what is argued by Roman-Gonzalez in [3], the research should be supported by a tripod composed of the university, the government, and the private enterprise, as shown in Figure 1.

The university is an essential support of the tripod since the university is not only called to train new professionals, but also is hoped to contribute with human knowledge, and this is achieved through research. Professors are the main actors of the investigation, but it is also the students who can collaborate in the publication of scientific articles.

The government is another significant support because it is called to define the policies and laws that promote research in a country. One of these policies that encourage research is, for example, the tax benefit for companies investing in research and technological development that currently applies in Peru [4].

Figure 1: Tripod of the research

The private company completes the tripod since they are called to finance the research. This financing can mainly be oriented to solve problems or challenges of the same company.

In developed countries, the private sector has many challenges to solve and relies on the university (professors and students) and their capacity to face these challenges. In this way, the company finances the different research projects under a political framework established by the government.

Unfortunately, this scenario is not replicated in developing countries, mainly because companies do not trust in the university’s abilities to solve problems, and because the government does not have adequate policies to motivate the research activities.

In Peru, we are in the process of transition from one panorama (the second) to the other (the first), hoping to obtain good results.

The research is a process that follows the scientific method, and that must end in the publication of one or several scientific articles. The scientific article is nothing more than a report of the research work carried out under a pre-established format. The release of scientific articles is critical because it is necessary to let the world know about what one is researching because whatever the subject one is investigating, one is sure that on the other side of the world more research groups are working on the same subject and/or similar topics. Thanks to the publications one can get in touch with other research groups, collaborative works are achieved, joint efforts to obtain better results, scholarship opportunities, and research stay, among other benefits.

Because the research is so essential, different rankings have been established that evaluate the universities in the function of the investigation and scientific production they carry out. Among these rankings we can mention the ones elaborated by SCIMAGO [5], America Economia [6], National Superintendency of Higher University Education (SUNEDU – Superintendencia Nacional de Educacion Superior Universitaria) of Peru [7], Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) [ 8], Webometrics [9], QS World University Ranking [10], among others. For the elaboration of these rankings, different parameters are used such as scientific production, scientific talent pool, citations by document, web size, international collaboration, domain’s inbound links, percentage of publication in journals of the first quartile, average scientific quality, among others [3] [6] [11].

The universities carry out and implement different strategies to improve their position in the rankings. Some use new methodologies in their teaching processes as in [12], and others develop a whole program of formative research to get undergraduate students to start publishing scientific articles, as mentioned in [13].

One of the most critical rankings developed as a function of scientific production is the one produced by the SCIMAGO group [5] [11].

SCIMAGO generates two types of ranking, one is the SIR World, which is a worldwide raking in which only institutions that have publications indexed in SCOPUS equal to or higher than 100 per year are included. Peru has had a growth in the number of institutions that enter in this ranking since 2009. In Figure 2, we can see this evolution where one can see that Peru went from 1 institution in 2009, passed through 4 institutions in 2012 and reached seven institutions in 2018. In Figure 2, one can also see the evolution of the best positioned Peruvian university in the ranking.

Apart from the SIR World, there is also the SIR Iber ranking that includes only Ibero-American countries. For entering into this ranking, it is only necessary to have at least one article published and indexed in SCOPUS. In Figure 3, one can see the evolution of the number of Peruvian institutions included in the SIR Iber ranking. One can see that by 2009 there were 50 Peruvian institutions and by 2018 the number increased to 77.

Figure 2: Evolution of the number of Peruvian institutions in the SIR World rankings [5] [11]

Figure 3: Evolution of the number of Peruvian institutions in the SIR Iber ranking [5] [11]

Among all the parameters mentioned above, one of the most used for the elaboration of the rankings of universities that evaluate scientific production is the number of published scientific articles. While it is true that it is an important parameter, it is not the most appropriate way to compare large universities that have many professors and students, compared to small universities with fewer professors and students. The universities with the most significant number of professors and students have more considerable human resources to carry out research and therefore, to have higher scientific production.

Faced with this situation, some proposals try to use more equitable parameters to compare scientific production in large and small universities. One of these works is the one presented in [14], where the authors use the ratio between the number of publications and the number of professors.

In this paper, one proposes other parameters that can also be used to develop rankings more equitably when comparing universities of different sizes and ages.

The continuation of this work is structured as follows: Section II shows the data source for the analysis carried out as well as the methodology followed. Section III presents the rankings obtained as a result. Finally, in Section IV, these results will be analyzed as part of the discussion and conclusions

2. Methodology

In Peru, due to the new University Law 30220, the majority of universities are investing more in research. Likewise, different analyzes on scientific production are being prepared, such as the one presented in [15].

The most equitable way to compare the scientific production of universities is taking into account their size. One way to include the size of the university in the elaboration of the rankings is to use the number of students. Another idea of having reference to the size of the university is to consider the amount of professor, as was done in [14].

There is a discrepancy due to the fact of considering the number of students or the number of professors since the students are not the main ones involved in the formal research process. Professors are called to do research; however, it is debatable to take into account the total number of professors or only take the number of full-time professors. It is arguably to say that just full-time professors do research.

Faced with this situation, in the present work, one takes into account the number of professors qualified as REGINA researchers. REGINA is the National Registry of Researchers by its initials in Spanish (Registro de Investigadores en Ciencia y Tecnología del Sistema Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Tecnológica). REGINA is a proposal of CONCYTEC (National Council of Science, Technology and Technological Innovation) that takes into account a set of parameters to evaluate the professionals who research to qualify them as researchers [16]. When considering the number of REGINA researchers per university, we will be sure to take into account those who are involved in scientific activity.

Likewise, in the present work, one will also consider the number of authors identified in SCOPUS to measure with an equitable way the scientific production in large and small universities.

In this section, the methodology followed for the elaboration of the proposed equitable rankings will be described.

2.1.  Data Collection

The data analyzed in the present work correspond to the articles published by each university. For this, the SCOPUS database belonging to ELSEVIER will be taken as a reference. The publications of 2017, 2018 will be analyzed, and the total papers will also be taken into account.

The analysis of the present work will be carried out on all the Peruvian universities that have an ID in the SCOPUS database. According to the SUNEDU biennial report [17], in Peru, there are 142 universities of which ten did not provide services at the date of publication of the mentioned report, besides there are four graduate schools and the Facultad de Teología Pontificia y Civil de Lima that has university rank.

To access the SCOPUS data, CONCYTEC provides access to all the people registered in CTI Vitae (bio-sketches related to Science and Technology) through the credentials created for that purpose. In this sense, there will be direct access to SCOPUS, as shown in Figure 4. CTI Vitae is a database that allows people who carry out science, technology, and innovation (CTI) activities to register their resumes.

Figure 4: Access to the SCOPUS database

Likewise, the information will be collected regarding the number of professors qualified as REGINA that each university has. For this purpose, the portal created by CONCYTEC will be accessed, as shown in Figure 5

Figure 5: Access to the portal to identify the REGINA researchers for each university

All data were collected on 31st March 2019.

2.2.  The ratio between the number of publication and number of researches and authors

For the elaboration of equitable rankings when comparing large universities with small universities, we propose to use two ratios. The first ratio will be considering the number of publications in a given year, divided by the number of REGINA researchers for each university (Equation 1). The second ratio considers the total number of publications divided by the number of authors identified in SCOPUS by each university (Equation 2).

Where:

• R_p/r is the ratio between the number of paper indexed in SCOPUS and the number of REGINA researchers that will be used to elaborate the ranking.
• R_p/a is the ratio between the number of paper indexed in SCOPUS and the number of authors identified in SCOPUS that will be used to elaborate the ranking.
• P is the total number of published paper indexed in SCOPUS.
• R is the number of REGINA researchers for each university, according to CONCYTEC.
• A is the number of total authors that publish papers with the affiliation of the university under analysis, according to SCOPUS.

3. Results

Of all the Peruvian universities, at the date of data collection, only 66 universities have their ID in SCOPUS, have at less one publication in 2017 and 2018, and have REGINA researchers.

After the calculation of the ratios mentioned in Section II, the following results are obtained and compared with the classical ranking based only on the number of publications.

Table I and Table II show the rankings only according to the number of paper for the years 2017 and 2018, respectively.

Table 1: Ranking based on the number of papers published in 2017

Table 2: Ranking based on the number of papers published in 2018

As indicated, these rankings are not equitable with small universities. In this sense, in Table III and Table IV, we can observe new classifications based on the R_p/r ratio described in Section II for the years 2017 and 2018, respectively.

Table 3: Ranking using the ratio Rp/r for the year 2017

Table 4: Ranking using the ratio Rp/r for the year 2018

Likewise, in Table V, one can see the ranking developed using the R_p/a ratio also described in the previous section.

Table 5: Ranking using the R_P/A ratio

Through these results can be observed that small universities rise in position when we compare the results of Table I and Table II with the results of Table III and Table IV.

4. Discussion and Conclusions

From Table I and Table II, it can be seen that most universities have a growth in the number of publications from 2017 to 2018. This growth is mainly due to the increasing importance that has been given to research in Peru due to many factors, among them, the new University Law, the accreditation process, and the competitive funds to finance research projects. It can be seen that the universities with the highest growth are Universidad Nacional Jorge Basadre Grohmann with 400 percent growth and Universidad Peruana Unión with 350 percent growth. Likewise, it can be seen that there are universities that show a decrease, these being the universities Universidad Ricardo Palma with 86.21 percent of regression and Universidad Nacional de Tumbes with 85.71 percent of regression. One can see in Figure 6, all publication evolution from 2017 to2018 for the Peruvian universities.

The fact of using the number of REGINA researchers as a reference to taking into account the size of the university responds to the fact that there are opinions that indicate that not all professors carry out research, while REGINA investigators are called to carry out research. However, it is also true that some professors are not REGINA and publish scientific articles, as well as students who have publications. In that sense, the use of the number of authors identified in SCOPUS could be the best option.

In Figure 7, the distribution of the best 20 universities can be observed according to the different parameters considered in this study.

Finally, one can conclude that when one not only take into account the number of published scientific articles but also the size of the university, the ranking changes drastically resulting in great surprises, mainly in small universities that invest in research

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