Visualization of ranking data: Geographical signatures in international collaboration, leadership and research impact

In this work we address the comprehensive Scimago Institutions Ranking 2012, proposing a data visualization of the listed bibliometric indicators for the 509 Higher Education Institutions among the 600 largest research institutions ranked according to their outputs. We focus on research impact, internationalization and leadership indicators, which became important benchmarks in a worldwide discussion about research quality and impact policies for universities. Our data visualization reveals a qualitative difference between the behavior of Northern American and Western European Higher Education Institutions concerning International collaboration levels. Chinese universities show still a systematic low international collaboration levels which are positively linked to the low research impact. The data suggests that research impact can be related directly to internationalization only to rather low values for both indicators. Above world average, other determinants may become relevant in fostering further impact. The leadership indicator provides further insights to the collaborative environment of universities in different geographical regions, as well as the optimized collaboration portfolio for enhancing research impact.