Performance profile of the Dutch research system

Output

Data publication

What is the citation impact of Dutch publications in the various scientific disciplines? In which fields of science does the Netherlands perform best? In this data publication, we look at the performance profile of the Dutch research system over the period 2021-2024 by comparing the research specialisation index (OSI) of the Netherlands with the citation impact (CI) for 35 science fields.

In short

  • The Netherlands has a very high citation impact among multidisciplinary journals.
  • Law and Criminology has a low citation impact, but a high share of scientific output.

The performance profile of the Netherlands research system relates the Netherlands international research specialisation index (RSI) in the period 2021-2024 to the citation impact (CI) score, for 35 scientific fields. Thus, the indicator shows whether the scientific fields in which Dutch science is most specialised are also the fields with the highest performance.
 

Degree of specialisation and citation impact by field, 2021-2024
 

EN-prestatieprofiel 2021-2024
Source: Clarivate Analytics/ WoS database, extraction by Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) and analysis by Rathenau Institute.
Notes: * These fields belong to the Humanities. Like Law, the Humanities are not well represented in Web of Science, as it is customary in these fields to publish in other ways as well.

Analysis
Of the 35 science fields, one field has a very high citation impact, namely the multidisciplinary journals. Six scientific fields have a high citation impact and twenty scientific fields an above-average citation impact. There are fifteen areas in which the Netherlands is highly specialized. The majority of these (14) also have a high or above-average citation impact.

More data
Please download the excel file to see the calculation and underlying figures for the performance profile below.

Technical explanation
a) Area-standardised citation impact scores (CI): the number of citations received by publications from the 2019-2022 period during the 2019-2023 period compared to the global average of citations received per area (global average = 1.0).

b) Research Specialization Index (OSI): the share of Dutch research publications per scientific field in the period 2019-2022 in the total Dutch publication output, divided by the average percentage of the same scientific field in the publication output of all reference countries combined, unweighted by publication size of the countries (mean for all reference countries = 1.0).

For an explanation of the used definitions and abbreviations we refer to the webpage Definitions for Science in Figures.

Footnotes

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