Research strengths identified by esteem and bibliometric indicators: a case study at the University of Vienna

The identification of one’s own research strengths is of crucial importance for research administration at universities. In this case study, two different approaches were applied to the University of Vienna. The first relies on funding and rankings information as well as on other esteem indicators. The second is based on a bibliometric analysis of the publication output. We used two alternative clusterings for publications for the bibliometric analysis: Web of Science subject categories and lists of researchers associated with esteem-indicators. Both, esteem-indicators and bibliometric analysis proved to be useful in identifying research strengths, lead to similar results and are meant to be used together to complement each other. We found that the greatest hindrance in the bibliometric approach lies in the inherent limitations of journals-assignment-based classification systems and the considerable time and efforts for more accurate researcher-based publication analyses. Further investigation on this subject, including new and alternative metrics, is needed and will be conducted in the future. However, the preliminary results already demonstrate the benefits of using esteem-factors together with bibliometric analyses for research strengths definition of universities.