Anal Bioanal Chem (2010) 398:17–26
DOI 10.1007/s00216-010-3804-7
FEATURE ARTICLE
Scientometric analysis of national university research
performance in analytical chemistry on the basis
of academic publications: Italy as case study
Anna Annibaldi & Cristina Truzzi & Silvia Illuminati &
Giuseppe Scarponi
Published online: 26 May 2010
# Springer-Verlag 2010
Introduction
Citation-based scientometric indicators, for example impact
factor (IF) of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) from the
Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) database of Thom-
son Reuters [1], have become common (though not
uncontroversial) tools for evaluation of the research perfor-
mance of individual scientists, departments, faculties, and
full universities, other research institutions, or even nations
and continents [2–8]. Although their crude use as sole
indicators of research performance has been questioned [9–
12], particularly when original IF values across disciplines
are considered without some normalization procedure [4,
13–22], it is generally acknowledged that citations and
impact factors indicate (are correlated with) the scientific
quality of journals [23] and that they can in fact be used,
together with other indicators, for informed peer review; and
the practice is indeed expanding because of the increasing
frequency of requests from governments [10, 17, 22, 24].
At an international level, to quote only one example,
citation and co-citation analyses were introduced long ago
by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) [25, 26] and now they are always
used for biannual evaluation of national performance in
several fields of research [25–27].
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article
(doi:10.1007/s00216-010-3804-7) contains supplementary material,
which is available to authorized users.
A. Annibaldi : C. Truzzi (*) : S. Illuminati : G. Scarponi
Department of Marine Science,
Polytechnic University of Marche – Ancona,
Via Brecce Bianche,
60131 Ancona, Italy
e-mail: c.truzzi@univpm.it
Several scientometric papers have been published
concerning: national and regional research performance
in analytical chemistry [28–33], analytical chemistry in
the European Union (EU) [34–36], the evolution of
quality in analytical chemistry journals [37], the evolution
of automation in spectroscopy [38], hot topics in global
analytical chemistry research (100 most cited papers) [39],
and mapping the world of analytical chemistry [6, 40–42].
However, there has been no evaluation of the academic
performance of a nation in analytical chemistry through
scientometric analysis of the publications of university
professors.
Stimulated by the request of the Italian Minister of
Education, Universities, and Research to the Italian Na-
tional University Council (CUN) to suggest criteria for
minimum requirements in the evaluation of the scientific
activity of Italian university professors, to be used, e.g., as a
guide in academic competitions [43–45], a census was
carried out, using the SciFinder database [46], of the papers
published by (full) professors (professori di prima fascia) in
the scientific sector of analytical chemistry in Italian
universities.
Evaluation of the quality (or more correctly the impact)
of publications has been carried out using a proxy required
by the CUN, i.e. the journal impact factor reported in the
JCR [1] after proper normalization of all IFs to the scale of
the ISI category of “Chemistry, Analytical” (CA). The
distribution of papers within journals according to publica-
tion frequency and between the various research subject
areas is reported, together with summary statistics on IF
distributions on the basis both of all the publications
retrieved and distinguishing between senior and junior
professors. The scientific output of each professor has been
characterized by reference to his/her h-index according to
Hirsch [47], which was computed from citations of papers
18
by individual professors, obtained from the Web of Science
(WoS) database of Thomson Reuters [48]. Also in this case
results are summarized and discussed considering senior,
junior, and all professors together.
Although the admittedly national objective of this study
is to evaluate Italian academic performance in analytical
chemistry, this work should be of more widespread interest
as it provides a method for judging the scientific results of
other countries in the same or other disciplines. In any case
it is to be stressed that we have not attempted to extend the
work to wider regions (for example Europe or even part of
the Continent) for two reasons. The first concerns the
difference in academic structure between nations, which
would have made it difficult to produce comparable data.
The other is that the amount of data to be selected, retrieved
and analysed would have been discouragingly great. Indeed
here we propose, for the first time, a general method for
evaluating national academic research in analytical chem-
istry and we apply it, in this instance, to Italy, for which we
have knowledge and competence.
Data source and processing
Databases
In February 2009 we scrutinized all the publications
produced during their professional lifetimes by the 80
Italian university (full) professors (in Italy called professori
di prima fascia, the highest permanent university teaching
position) of analytical chemistry (the scientific sector is
called Chim/01 in Italy). Sixty-five of the group were
senior (full) professors (in Italy called professori ordinari),
and fifteen were junior (full) professors (in Italy professori
straordinari, this is the first position, which generally
extends for three years after appointment). The research
was carried out through the SciFinder [46] bibliographic
search engine, which sifts through two databases, i.e.
CAplus (from 1907 to the present) [49] and MEDLINE
(from 1950 to the present) [50]. After deleting duplicates,
homonyms, conference proceedings, patents, and local
publications of minor relevance, the research papers were
arranged in their journals of provenance, ranked in
decreasing order of publication frequency.
For all ISI journals, i.e. the great majority, the JCR
impact factor (published by Thomson Reuters for 2007, the
latest year available in February 2009) was also retrieved as
a proxy of the impact of publications. In case of a journal
discontinued but merged with another, the papers published
in the former were added to those of the latter and assigned
the same IF. For non-ISI journals, calculations were carried
out in two ways, firstly by assigning them IF=0 and second
by excluding them altogether.
A. Annibaldi et al.
Referring to the h-index [47], for all the publications
retrieved, citations were obtained from the Thomson Reuters
ISI Web of Science database [48], considering all the years
available (1900 to present), to cover the full period spanned
by all the professors’ publications. Because the Italian
University system’s subscription to WoS includes only the
period 1990 to present, the procedure on the WoS page
“Cited Reference Search” (instead of the page “Search”) was
used to extend the search to all available years. Using this
procedure cited reference variants and incorrect citations were
recognized, corrected and included in the counting of the
proper papers to achieve unified counting. Unfortunately, use
of this procedure does not enable self-citations to be
discovered and taken into account. However it has been
suggested that the effect of self-citations on h is much smaller
than on the total citation count; in fact they are irrelevant both
for papers with<h citations and with many more than
h citations [47]. Given the above limitations, no attempt has
been made to exclude self citations. The h-index of individual
professors was easily computed from their retrieved citations
as the number of papers with citation number≥h, and used as
a measure of cumulative achievement of each of them up to
the present. To obtain an international comparison, following
the idea of the extension of the h-index concept to groups of
individuals [47], research groups [51], institutes [52] and
countries [53], a retrieval from the WoS database (1990 to
present) has been carried out by searching for the topic
“Analytical Chemistry” and refining results according to the
option “Countries/Territories”.
The scientometric analysis was carried out in two ways.
At the beginning all professors were considered together
and the elaboration referred to all the retrieved publications.
Subsequently, in order to evaluate whether there was a
difference in publication impact and scientific output
between senior professors and junior professors, the
scientometric analysis was also carried out separately for
the two categories of professors.
All the calculations were carried out on two datasets: the first
referring to all the publications together, the second using the
average IFs computed from the publications of each professor.
Normalization
As expected, in view of the wide and interdisciplinary and
multidisciplinary scientific interests of analytical chemists,
a substantial number of papers were published in journals
outside the JCR category of “Chemistry, Analytical”. This
situation is considered quite normal by the analytical
chemistry scientific community given the high interest of
the sector for applications in other disciplines in works
where the analytical contribution could be important or
even essential. Not to mention the cases of the always
exhorted multidisciplinary works.
Scientometric analysis of national university research performance in analytical chemistry
However, it is well known that direct comparison of the
IFs of journals of different disciplines or different JCR
subject categories is inadequate [4, 13–22], partly because
of the size of the scientific community of each discipline,
and much more because of the diversity of citing behaviour,
i.e. the so called “citation density”, among disciplines [4,
13, 21]. For example, in the field of chemistry, an
evaluation carried out during the eighties (from 1983 to
1992), showed that remarkable variability was present
between chemical disciplines, with similar IF values
(mean±SD) for “analytical” (1.2±0.1) and “general” (1.16±
0.05) chemistry, rather lower values for “applied” chemistry
(0.51±0.07), and much higher values for “physical” (1.7±0.5),
“organic” (1.8±0.6), and “inorganic and nuclear” (1.9±0.5)
chemistry [37].
Then, in order to make the IF data to be analyzed as
homogeneous as possible and comparable across catego-
ries, a normalization was carried out, slightly modified from
the procedure of Sen [54] to rescale all IFs to the scale of
the category “Chemistry, Analytical” as follows:
IF j
nIF cat: anal ¼ max IF cat: anal
max IF cat: j
where, nIFcat.anal is the normalized IF rescaled to the CA
category, IFj is the JCR IF for journal j, maxIFcat.j is the
maximum IF value for the JCR category to which journal j
is assigned, and maxIFcat.anal is the maximum IF value for
the JCR category CA (i.e. 5.827 in 2007). In practice, this
normalization procedure is that of a maximum scaling, with
the maximum set at the highest value of the CA category. In
this way, differently from the Sen normalization [54], which
translates data on the 0–10 scale, the original scale of the
CA category is here retained and easier comparisons are
possible with literature data. In cases where the JCR
assigned the journal considered to two or more categories,
the maxIFcat.j value was taken from the category with the
highest maximal value.
Concerning the number of citations and the h-index,
unlike the journal IF, these are absolute measures for which
no corrections or normalizations are possible to take
account of the differences in citation intensity and density
across disciplines and over the years. It has been observed,
for example, that h-indices in biology and life sciences are
much higher than in physics, and that further research is
needed to understand distributions and correct for differ-
ences in different fields of science [47]. It has been
proposed that a normalisation could be obtained by
dividing the h value by the average number of authors in
the h publications, on the assumption that differences
between disciplines arise from differences in the number
of authors which could produce future self-citations [55].
However this method has not so far been adopted and no
19
such normalisation has been carried out here, because the
procedure is not directly implemented on WoS.
Because the h-index continues to increase over time
(even after the scientist stops publishing), to compare
professors of different seniority, we followed Hirsch’s
suggestion [47], and computed the variable m=h/y (where
y=number of years of activity or scientific age).
Data analysis
This section can be found in the Electronic supplementary
material.
Results and discussion
Distribution of papers
This investigation led to a collection of 8,529 records of
papers (86% from senior professors) published in 630
journals. 8,032 papers (94% of the total) were published in
ISI journals, 4,689 of which (55% of the total) appeared in 53
of the 70 journals included in the JCR category “Chemistry,
Analytical” (journal coverage of the category approx. 76%).
2,534 papers (∼30% of the total records) were published in
analytical general scope journals, i.e. devoted to all the
aspects of analytical chemistry, whereas 5,995 papers (∼70%)
were published in well focussed, thematic journals.
The distribution of publications according to selected
categories of scientific disciplines is shown in Table 1, from
which it can be seen that the major number of publications
(1,112, 13.1%) pertains to the category of “separation
science” followed by ∼12% each for the “environmental”,
and “electroanalytical” chemistry sectors; after these come
“inorganic”, “solution equilibria”, “agricultural and food”,
“sensors and biosensors” (between ∼7% and ∼5%), followed
by “physical”, “industrial”, “general”, “medicinal”, “spectros-
copy” and “thermochemistry” (at ∼3%) and by “clinical and
biomedical”, “chemometrics”, “mass spectrometry”, “bio-
chemistry and bioanalytical”, and “surface interface colloid”
chemistry (at ∼2%). Marginal contributions («1%) relate to the
subject areas of “crystallography” (no.=37), “instrumenta-
tion” (no.=16), “radioanalytical and nuclear” (no.=11),
“supramolecular” (no.=9), and “forensic” chemistry (no.=3),
and also within the non-chemistry areas, with “Medicine” and
“Physics” contributing ∼1% each and even less for “Biology”
(0.6%) and “Geology” (0.06%).
Note that the thematic distribution presented here is to be
treated with caution, because a substantial proportion of the
papers were assigned according to the journal name (and its
field of primary interest) because it was almost impossible
to analyze all the titles and summaries of the papers in order
to subdivide them among the various subject areas.
20 A. Annibaldi et al.

Table 1 Distribution of the papers according to selected branches Comprehensive summary statistics of normalized and
Scientific branch n % not normalized impact factors are reported in Table 2, in
terms of average, standard deviation, median, 1st–3rd
Chemistry quartiles, minimum–maximum. Results obtained from IFs
separation science 1112 13.1 of all publications together and from average IFs calculated
environmental 1018 11.9 for each professor are reported separately. In this table data
electroanalytical 1009 11.8 are given both for all professors together, and separately for
inorganic 601 7.0 senior and junior professors. As regards non-ISI journals,
solution equilibria 565 6.6 results are reported of calculations for which they were
agricultural and food 492 5.8 assigned IF=0 and of calculations from which they were
sensors and biosensors 444 5.2 excluded altogether.
physical 293 3.4 Because the results obtained after exclusion of non-ISI
industrial 263 3.1 journals were not significantly different from (only very
general 253 3.0 slightly higher than) those obtained after assigning them
medicinal 250 2.9 IF=0, all the results reported throughout the text (with the
spectroscopy 246 2.9 exception of those reported in Table 2) refer to computa-
thermochemistry 242 2.8 tions carried out assigning IF=0 to non-ISI journals.
clinical and biomedical 207 2.4 Figure 1 shows the frequency distributions of normalized
chemometrics 196 2.3 and not-normalized impact factors referred to all the
mass spectrometry 177 2.1 publications. A three-modal distribution, skewed toward
biochemistry and bioanalytical 161 1.9 high values, can be observed with modes for both nIF and
surface interface colloid 154 1.8
IF at approximately 0.8, 2.8, and 5.2, respectively. Among
materials 139 1.6
the journals of the JCR category “Chemistry, Analytical”
organic 135 1.6
the first mode is especially characterized (Table S1 in
Electronic supplementary material) first of all by the Italian
engineering 77 0.9
Ann Chim-Rome but also by other international journals
archaeometry 73 0.9
such as Thermochim Acta, Chromatographia, Anal Lett, Int
organometallic 63 0.7
J Environ An Ch, J Liq Chromatogr R T, J Chemometr,
crystallography 37 0.4
Archaeometry, Accredit Qual Assur, Rev Anal Chem. The
instrumentation 16 0.2
second mode is characterized by the most important
radioanalytical and nuclear 11 0.1
European journals of analytical chemistry, for example
supramolecular 9 0.1
Anal Chim Acta, J Chromatogr A, J Electroanal Chem,
forensic 3 0.04
Talanta, Anal Bioanal Chem, Analyst, J Pharmaceut
Medicine 91 1.1
Biomed, Electroanal, Rapid Commun Mass Sp, Sensor
Physics 72 0.8
Actuat B-Chem, J Sep Sci, and many others. The third mode
Biology 51 0.6
is especially characterized by Anal Chem, Biosens Bioelec-
Multidisciplinary 15 0.2
tron, Trac-Trend Anal Chem.
Geology 5 0.06
An overall summary representation of the impact factor
Others 49 0.6 distributions is reported using the box-plot tool in Fig. S1
(Electronic supplementary material).
From these elaborations it can be noted (Table 2) that the
Impact factors average nIF for the publications of Italian university (full)
professors of analytical chemistry is 1.969 (median 1.562,
The list of the journals ranked according to the publication 1st–3rd quartiles 0.700–3.144). It is to be noted that if we
frequency, together with the IF values available for 2007 consider not normalized IFs, we obtain values which are
and the calculated nIFs, is reported in Table S1 (Electronic significantly (even if not exceptionally) higher than the
supplementary material). All ISI journals are shown in previous ones, i.e. an average of 2.407 (median 2.580, 1st–
capital letters, according to the JCR abbreviations, and 3rd quartiles 1.145–3.186). This increment (about +0.4
those pertaining to the category “Chemistry, Analytical” in units for the average or +22%) shows that publications in
boldface. The non-ISI journals are reported in lower-case journals not included in the analytical category have, on
letters and abbreviated according to the Chemical Abstracts average, higher impact factors than those published in
Service (CAS) or other international abbreviations if not journals of the analytical category, and this justifies our
present in the CAS. decision to make preferential use of normalized IFs.
Scientometric analysis of national university research performance in analytical chemistry 21

Table 2 Comprehensive summary statistics of normalized and not normalized impact factors (with non-ISI journals assigned IF=0 or excluded),
number of citations per paper, h-index, and m* computed for all, senior, and junior professors

Database Professors Impact Non-ISI Average Standard Median 1st–3rd Min–Max

factor journals deviation quartiles

Impact factor
IF of all papers (JCR, 2008) All nIF IF=0 1.969 1.438 1.562 0.700–3.144 0–5.827
excluded 2.091 1.393 1.800 0.700–3.186 0.023–5.827
IF IF=0 2.407 1.818 2.580 1.145–3.186 0–28.751
excluded 2.556 1.769 2.632 1.362–3.212 0.093–28.751
Senior nIF IF=0 1.908 1.415 1.562 0.700–2.971 0–5.827
excluded 2.026 1.374 1.589 0.700–3.186 0.037–5.827
IF IF=0 2.345 1.699 2.532 1.124–3.186 0–28.751
excluded 2.490 1.644 2.580 1.362–3.212 0.097–28.751
Junior nIF IF=0 2.370 1.517 2.632 0.869–3.271 0–5.827
excluded 2.520 1.439 2.782 1.164–3.279 0.023–5.827
IF IF=0 2.801 2.406 2.867 1.693–3.446 0–28.751
excluded 2.978 2.372 2.934 1.959–3.553 0.093–28.751
Average IF of each professor’s All nIF IF=0 1.955 0.601 1.924 1.556–2.305 0.901–3.600
publications (JCR, 2008) excluded 2.066 0.604 2.074 1.658–2.426 0.918–3.671
IF IF=0 2.398 0.622 2.406 1.931–2.714 1.146–4.202
excluded 2.536 0.626 2.511 2.115–2.904 1.167–4.525
Senior nIF IF=0 1.866 0.541 1.877 1.503–2.175 0.901–3.560
excluded 1.973 0.546 2.010 1.625–2.288 0.918–3.642
IF IF=0 2.285 0.565 2.314 1.849–2.641 1.146–4.202
excluded 2.421 0.575 2.421 2.050–2.721 1.167–4.525
Junior nIF IF=0 2.345 0.707 2.456 1.806–2.722 1.128–3.600
excluded 2.465 0.695 2.486 2.046–2.845 1.190–3.671
IF IF=0 2.886 0.641 2.887 2.434–3.407 1.720–4.015
excluded 3.033 0.611 2.990 2.607–3.407 1.962–4.246
Citations per paper
Citations of papers All – – 16.9 8.7 14.5 12.3–18.7 5.1–48.5
(WoS, all years) Senior – – 16.6 8.6 14.2 12.2–18.6 5.1–48.5
Junior – – 18.1 9.4 15.7 12.4–24.1 5.7–43.1
h-index
All – – 19.1 7.6 18.0 14.0–23.0 5–44
Senior – – 19.2 8.0 18.0 14.0–23.0 5–44
Junior – – 18.5 6.2 19.0 14.0–21.0 7–30
m*
All – – 0.66 0.31 0.62 0.43–0.82 0.13–1.53
Senior – – 0.60 0.28 0.57 0.42–0.73 0.13–1.50
Junior – – 0.89 0.33 0.86 0.70–1.04 0.27–1.53

*m=h/y, where y=scientific age

Citations, h-index, and m
Citation summary statistics are reported in Table 2. A
unimodal distribution was observed both for total professors’
citations (mode ∼900, average 1,385, median 1,052, 1st–3rd
quartiles 677–1,696, maximum 7,440), and for the number
of citations per paper (mode ∼13, average 16.9, median 14.5,
1st–3rd quartiles 12.3–18.7, maximum 48.6). Note that if we
consider all the papers separately (independently of the
grouping for each professor) the average number of citations
per paper is 18.3. The top cited papers (total citations >100)
are reported in Table S2 (Electronic supplementary material).
22 A. Annibaldi et al.

a (sustained research production), may decrease when a

scientist reduces his/her publishing rate or stops altogether.
The relationship between the total number of citations of
each professor, Nc,tot, and his/her h-index was studied by
1000
plotting Nc,tot vs. h2 for all professors (Fig. 2). The very
good linearity obtained (r=0.972) verifies the equation Nc,
Frequency

2
tot =ah as predicted by Hirsch [47], with the proportionality
coefficient a=3.34. Similar results were obtained for data
separated for senior and junior professors. The value a for
500 each professor varied between 2.38 and 5.06 (average 3.27,
SD 0.60) which compares well with the empirical interval
of 3–5 reported by Hirsch [47].

Comparison with literature data

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 Impact factor
nIF
As possible comparisons with international data we can
b quote first an extensive scientometric investigation on the
1000 world literature of analytical chemistry [40] carried out on
the papers published in the period 1978–80 in 22 core
journals of analytical chemistry. Here the average IF value
obtained for Italy is 1.678. More recently a study
Frequency

concerning analytical chemistry in the European Union

carried out between 1993 and 1999 and based on papers
500
abstracted in Analytical Abstracts [35] reported an average
IF value of 1.70 for Italy compared with 1.75 for the EU. If
we consider that on average the IF of journals in the JCR
category “Chemistry, Analytical” was approximately stable
during the eighties and that it increased by about 0.4 units
0 from the nineties, when it stood at ∼1.45, to the year 2007,
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
IF

Fig. 1 Frequency distribution of (a) normalized (nIF) and (b) not 8000
normalized (IF) impact factors for all the publications of Italian
university (full) professors (February 2009). IF=0 for non-ISI journals

6000
The results for the h-index and for m (concerning the
h value per year of activity) are reported in Table 2.
Unimodal distributions were also obtained in these cases.
For the h-index the average value was 19.1 (mode ∼17,
Nc,tot

4000
median 18.0, 1st–3rd quartiles 14.0–23.0, maximum 44),
whereas for m the average was 0.66 (mode ∼0.50, median
0.62, 1st–3rd quartiles 0.43–0.82, maximum 1.53). It was
observed that a value of m ≈ 1 (i.e. an h-index of 20 after 2000
20 years of scientific activity) characterizes successful
scientists, whereas a value of m ≈ 2 is obtained only by
outstanding scientists found in top universities or major
laboratories [47]. 0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
It is worth noting that although h cannot decrease with
h2
time (it continues to increase even after the scientist stops
publishing), m, because it is also related to productivity Fig. 2 Relationship between the total number of citations and h2
Scientometric analysis of national university research performance in analytical chemistry
when it had risen to 1.847 (Fig. S2 in Electronic supplemen-
tary material), the value here obtained for professors using
the 2007 IFs of journals, i.e. 1.969, seems in general
agreement with the values of 1.68–1.70 estimated for Italy
at the end of the seventies [40] and during the nineties [35],
if one considers the increasing trend of the past two decades;
it is, moreover, slightly better than the average of the
category “Chemistry, Analytical” in 2007, which is 1.847.
For completeness of information it is to be said that a
very recent paper [36] reports higher IF values than those
observed here, but in that case only a very limited number
of journals (i.e. 18 or 4), focussed exclusively on the field
of analytical chemistry for the time period 2000–2007, are
considered.
Citations, h-index, and m
No other compilations have been carried out for national
scientists in the field of analytical chemistry until now. A
list of top, international, living chemists (h≥50), distributed
among the various chemistry disciplines, has been pub-
lished by Chemistry World since 2007 and was updated 11
March 2010 [57]. No Italians are present in the March 2010
list, (note that in our results for active Italian university
professors the maximum value reached for h is 44). If we
compute m, however, a few of our professors appear in the
list (Table S3 in Electronic supplementary material).
Further comparison of our m data (average 0.66, SD=
0.31, min 0.13, max 1.53) can be carried out with values
reported by Hirsch [47] for Nobel prize-winners in physics
in the last 20 years. i.e. m=1.14, SD=0.47, mmin =0.47,
mmax =2.19.
For a broad comparison, our results of the retrieval of
citations and h-indices for major countries for the topic
“Analytical Chemistry” are reported in Table S3 (Electronic
supplementary material). Data approximately follow the
Glänzel model [53, 56] according to which h is related to
the number of papers, n, and the average citation rate per
paper, x, by the simple formula h=cn1/3x2/3, where c is a
positive constant. A linear relationship is obtained between
h and n1/3x2/3 with a correlation coefficient r=0.980, while
c=0.800 is to be compared with the value of 0.932 obtained
considering all fields combined for the 1996–2006 dataset
[53].
From these results it can be seen that the average
citation rate obtained from the papers of all professors
(18.3) is slightly higher than that retrieved for Italy
(16.56) and in the range of values obtained for major
European countries (approximately between 15 and 20).
No comparison is possible with the h-index of countries
because, as has been pointed out [47], the overall h-index
of a group will generally be larger than that of each
member of the group.
23
Number of papers published by professors
The frequency distribution of the number of papers
published by each professor and related comments can be
found in the supplementary material.
Comparison between senior and junior professors
If we consider the normalized impact factor distribution of
all the publications of professors distinguishing between
senior and junior professors (Table 2, and the box-plot
representations in Fig. 3), we observe a substantial
difference, especially in the centre of the distribution,
between senior professors (average nIF 1.908, median
1.562) and junior professors (average nIF 2.370, median
2.632) with a net increment of ∼0.5 units on the averages,
and much more on medians (∼1), when we pass from senior
to junior professors. Indeed it is noteworthy that while the
distribution is skewed toward high values for senior
professors, with the highest frequencies at low values
(mode=0.700), the skewness is reversed for junior profes-
sors, with the highest frequencies at high values (mode=
3.186). Even the not normalized impact factors show
similar increments, with an average of 2.345 (median
2.532) for senior professors and an average of 2.801
(median 2.867) for junior professors.
Concerning the h-index, results show no great difference
between senior and junior professors (Table 2). Average
values of 19.2 and 18.5 (with medians of 18.0 and 19.0) are
observed for senior and junior professors, respectively, and
both groups showed the same mode, ∼17 (Fig. S5 in
supplementary material).
This apparently strange result (for each researcher
h increases during his/her scientific life) may be because
Fig. 3 Box-plot representation 7
of the nIF computed from all the
publications of senior, junior,
and all professors 6
5
4
nIF
3
2
1
0
All Senior Junior
24
of several factors. First, during the sixties and seventies, the
productivity of researchers was somewhat reduced because
of the limited availability of instrumental methods. With the
improvement of electronics new, more efficient and rapid
instrumental techniques (including multielemental or multi-
analyte techniques) were developed and became widely
available from the seventies to eighties. In the same period
the use of computers greatly increased the potential of
analytical techniques and data elaboration. More recently
the availability of on-line transfer of information increased
the rapidity of access to both scientific literature and
manuscript publications. Finally the number of missing
cited papers on the WoS database increases substantially
with the age of the papers.
Nonetheless, because h is a cumulative index, its absolute
value is not adequate to compare professors with different
seniority. A more correct measurement is obtained by
dividing h for the scientific age, giving the value of m [47],
to be interpreted as an h value per year of activity (results in
Table 2). From the distributions of m values (Fig. 4) it can be
noted that m increases significantly passing from senior
professors (average 0.60, SD 0.28, median 0.57) to junior
professors (average 0.89, SD 0.33, median 0.86). The same
trend is found for the average citation rate per paper which
increases from 16.6 to 18.1 (Table 2).
It is possible that more careful selection of the journals
invited to publish the results of scientific research, together
with improvement in the quality of the research itself, could
explain the significant increase in both the impact factor and m
for junior professors compared with senior professors.
Average impact factors of each professor’s publications
The statistics obtained using the average impact factor
computed from all the publications of each professor are
Fig. 4 Box-plot representation 2 professor.
of m (= h/y) for senior, junior,
and all professors
m
1
0
All Senior Junior
A. Annibaldi et al.
summarized in Table 2; details and comments are given in
supplementary material.
Conclusions
Scientometric analysis of papers produced by the 80 Italian
university (full) professors of analytical chemistry, carried
out in February 2009, led to 8,529 records, with an average
of 106.6 papers per professor. Ninety-four percent of the
papers were published in ISI journals with 55% in the JCR
category of “Chemistry, Analytical”. This datum highlights
that the scientific interests of analytical chemists also
extend to the subject areas of other chemical disciplines
(particularly environmental, general and inorganic, agricul-
tural and food, physical, industrial, medicinal, clinical/
biomedical, materials, and organic chemical branches)
underlying the interdisciplinary or even multidisciplinary
character of many studies.
The average impact factor (normalized to the scale of the
“Chemistry, Analytical” JCR category) obtained from all
the publications retrieved was 1.969 (median 1.562), in
general agreement with values estimated for Italian scien-
tists in previous literature reports, with a net increase from
senior professors, which show an average of 1.908 (median
1.562), to junior professors, which have an average of
2.370 (median 2.632). The corresponding averages
obtained with not-normalized IFs increased relative to the
normalized IF, but not very much—to 2.407 for all
professors and to 2.345 and 2.801, for senior and junior
professors, respectively—signifying, however, that, on
average, publications in not-analytical (especially medical)
journals achieve higher numerical values for IF. Similar
values and a similar increment between senior and junior
professors were also obtained when averages were com-
puted from the average impact factor computed for each
The average number of citations per paper was 18.3,
irrespective of the seniority of professors and in agreement
with values obtained for major European countries
concerning the topic of analytical chemistry. The average
h-index was 19.2 for senior and 18.5 for junior professors
(19.1 for all professors together), and m, = h/y increased
substantially from senior to junior professors, on average
from 0.66 to 0.89.
The observed improvements from senior to junior
professors could reasonably be interpreted as a result of
the selection of higher reputation and high-impact-factor
journals by junior professors, when publishing their works,
presumably corresponding to higher quality research and
results in more recent years.
Finally we do not propose use of average IF or h-index
as reference values as they stand: indeed we propose
Scientometric analysis of national university research performance in analytical chemistry
scientific (scientometric) elements to be considered by the
chemical analytical academic community in selecting such
values. These selections remain in any case the responsi-
bility of the Italian National University Council (CUN). In
particular the decision to be taken must establish which
statistics are to be considered (average, median, 1st quartile,
or other) and on a way of differentiating them with
reference to the different permanent positions for which
candidates can compete. Moreover, inevitably, the CUN has
also to take account of the implications of discussions with
and proposals of other academic chemical disciplines and
of the necessary compromise action which will have to be
taken in order to achieve homogenous criteria of evaluation
between them, also with the contribution of the Italian
Chemical Society (SCI, Società Chimica Italiana). It is to
be stressed, however, that, according to the Ministerial note,
academic competition commissions must take account not
only of scientometric indices but also of many other
elements, in particular the consistency of the research
group and the real merits of the candidate, but also the
size of the Institution (with reference particularly to those
which are small or disadvantaged, e.g. where chemical
analytical groups are active in non-chemical Faculties), the
kind and amount of instrumentation to which he or she had
access, and, much more important, by reading the papers
presented. The IF values and/or h-indices should therefore
set no more than minimum requirements to be considered
and should help to limit the possibility of over or under-
estimating the value of candidates for permanent positions
in the discipline of analytical chemistry.
Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to Ettore Novellino, a
member of the Italian National University Council (CUN), for the
initial advice that we should perform electronic retrieval of university
(full) professors’ publications in order to obtain the basic information
to answer the Ministerial request concerning a bibliometric reference
to be included in the minimum requirements in academic competition
regulations, to Luigi Campanella, the President of the Italian Chemical
Society (SCI), for his suggestion that we should publish the results of
the work, and to Maria Careri and Aldo Roda, the President and the
Past-President of the Analytical Chemistry Division of the SCI, for
stimulating and useful discussions. We are also grateful to the
Polytechnic University of Marche for its financial support.
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Anna Annibaldi is a research Silvia Illuminati is a research

associate in Analytical Chemistry
at the Marche Polytechnic Univer-
sity, Ancona (Italy), where she
teaches the course on “Analysis of
pollutants”. She graduated in
Chemistry at the University of
Bologna in 2001 and she obtained
a PhD degree in Biology and
Marine Ecology in 2005. Her
scientific interests have focussed
principally on the field of environ-
mental analytical chemistry, partic-
ularly on the voltammetric study of
heavy metals in several environmental matrices, and on the determination
of organic pollutants in food. She has contributed to the development of
chemical fractionation procedures for heavy metals in atmospheric
aerosols and in snow.
associate in Analytical Chemistry
at the Marche Polytechnic Univer-
sity, Ancona (Italy). She graduated
in Biology at the same university
in 2001 and she obtained a PhD
degree in Biology and Marine
Ecology in 2005. Her scientific
interests have focussed principally
on environmental analytical chem-
istry, particularly on the voltam-
metric study of heavy metals in
different environmental and food
matrices and also of biomarkers in
marine organisms. She has taken part in two Italian Expeditions to
Antarctica and in several oceanographic campaigns (Italy, United
Kingdom), contributing to the development of a voltammetric in-situ
profiler system for real time heavy metal determination in sea water.

Cristina Truzzi is researcher in

Analytical Chemistry at the Marche
Polytechnic University in Ancona
(Italy) were she teaches courses on
“Instrumental analytical chemistry”
and “Food chemical analysis”. She
worked previously at the University
of Modena in the field of analytical
pharmacology and environmental
toxicology, on the determination of
heavy metals and the study of their
toxic effects in organisms. Cur-
rently, her scientific interests are
focused mainly on environmental
analytical chemistry, with particular attention to the determination and
speciation of trace heavy metals in different environmental matrixes with
different amounts of anthropization (seawater, snow, aerosol. organ-
isms), using voltammetric techniques (DPASV, SWASV). She is also
interested in determination of organic pollutants in the environment and
food by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and in the application of
environmental chemometrics to marine science. She has taken part in
several oceanographic campaigns. She is a member of the Italian
Chemical Society (Division of Analytical Chemistry).
Giuseppe Scarponi is full profes-
sor of Analytical Chemistry of the
Marche Polytechnic University in
Ancona (Italy). He previously
worked at the Universities of
Camerino, Genoa, and Venice. He
is a member of the Analytical
Chemistry Divisions of the Ameri-
can Chemical Society (since 1983)
and the Italian Chemical Society
(since 1975) of which he has been a
member of the Governing Board
since 2007. His scientific interests
have focused mainly on electroana-
lytical chemistry, environmental analytical chemistry, and chemometrics.
He has taken part in seven Italian expeditions to Antarctica and in
oceanographic cruises in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Ross Sea as
leader of the analytical chemistry group. He was the scientific coordinator
of the Italian Antarctic Station during the 1998–1999 austral summer
campaign. He is a member of the scientific committee of the European
Research Course on Atmospheres (Grenoble) and he is a founding associate
of the Italian Aerosol Society.