Publications

University rankings (i.e., Shanghai Ranking, Times Higher Education, QS World University Ranking) assess the research quality of universities by different indicators such as the numbers of publications, and the research influence of universities is evaluated by indicators such as the number of citations. In both national and international rankings, TUM is among the top-rated German universities.

Since 2007, TUM-IAS Fellows have contributed 3,303 publications to the TUM total number of publications (based on Scopus database). These publications have been cited almost 130,000 times (status: March 31, 2022). Citation analysis reveals that publications produced by TUM-IAS Fellows mostly in cooperation with their respective TUM Hosts have a considerably higher average citation impact than all publications by TUM in the same period of time (2007 to present): 39.3 vs. 25.0 average number of citations per publication (see Tab. 1). These data demonstrate that the research performance of the TUM-IAS has a positive effect on the ranking indicators of TUM.

Table 1

The presence of publications in the most influential journals in the world is shown by the “number of publications in top journal percentiles.” Bibliometric analysis reveals that the percentage of publications in the 5  percent most-cited journals (defined by the  journal metrics SCImago Journal Rank SJR, see Tab. 2) is much higher for publications from TUM-IAS Fellows in comparison to the overall publications by TUM. These data indicate that the research output generated by TUM-IAS Fellows contributes significantly toward TUM’s national and international reputation as one of Germany’s top universities.

Table 2