'Eye Spy' image by Avril Monahan
A recent report of independent international reviewers, Evidence Ltd, commissioned by Forfás and the HEA finds Ireland – and UCD – punch above our weight when it comes to research output.
Assessing research activity via publications and their citation performance, the Evidence Report shows that Ireland’s volume of research more than doubled between 1998 and 2007. By comparison, outputs for France, Germany and the UK were roughly level.
According to the Evidence Report, the research base is dominated by UCD, TCD and UCC. “The picture is of a small number of HEIs which support diverse portfolios and have grown rapidly, supported by a network of medium-sized and smaller institutions with niche research.”
Over the past five years the number of papers in all research fields has increased dramatically. UCD's performance shows a 36.6% increase from 2,861 papers in the period 1998-2002 to 4,510 papers in the period 2003-2007. The number of UCD research papers published in 2007 was 1,079 – double the annual output a decade earlier. Overall, UCD now leads the publications ranking with 7,371 papers published over the ten year period.
Overall, Ireland shows an impressive increase (33%) in terms of research output in 2007 over the previous 5 years.
