USU PR — Universitas Sumatera Utara (USU) has achieved the fourth-best position in Indonesia for research in the ranking released by the global ranking institution Scimago 2024. Above USU is Universitas Indonesia in the first position, Universitas Gadjah Mada in the second position, and Universitas Diponegoro in the third position.

This year, USU has risen to the fourth position in the research category based on the evaluation by Scimago, with the following indicators:

1. Research

Normalization Impact: This indicator is calculated based on the institution's leadership output, using the methodology established by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, called the Item-oriented field normalized citation score average.

Excellence with Leadership (EwL): Excellence with Leadership indicates the number of documents to which the institution is the main contributor (Moya-Anegón et al., 2013). This indicator depends on the size.

Output (O): The total number of documents published in Scopus-indexed scientific journals (Romo-Fernández et al., 2011; OECD, 2016).

Not Own Journals Output (NotOJ): The number of documents not published in the institution's owned journals (published by the institution).

Own Journals (OJ): The number of journals published by the institution.

International Collaboration (IC): The institution's output is generated through collaboration with foreign institutions. These values are calculated by analyzing the output of institutions whose affiliations include more than one country (Guerrero-Bote, Olmeda-Gómez, and Moya-Anegón, 2013; Lancho-Barrantes, Guerrero-Bote, and Moya-Anegón, 2013; Lancho-Barrantes et al., 2013; Chinchilla-Rodríguez et al., 2010; 2012).

High-Quality Publications (Q1): The number of publications published by an institution in the most influential scientific journals in the world. This is the ranking in the first quartile (25%) in its category according to the SCImago Journal Rank (SJRII) indicator (Miguel, Chinchilla-Rodríguez, and Moya-Anegón, 2011; Chinchilla-Rodríguez, Miguel, and Moya-Anegón, 2015).

Excellence (Exc): Indicates the number of scientific outputs of an institution included in the top 10% of the most cited papers in their respective fields. This is a measure of the institution's high research output (SCImago Lab, 2011; Bornmann, Moya-Anegón, and Leydesdorff, 2012; Bornmann and Moya-Anegón, 2014a; Bornmann et al., 2014b).

Scientific Leadership (L): Leadership indicates the magnitude of an institution's output as the main contributor, i.e., the number of papers whose corresponding authors are affiliated with the institution (Moya-Anegón, 2012; Moya-Anegón et al., 2013; Moya-Anegón et al.,).

Open Access (OA): The percentage of documents published in Open Access journals or indexed in the Unpaywall database.

Scientific Talent Pool (STP): The number of different authors from an institution's total publication output during a specific period.

2. Innovation

Innovative Knowledge (IK): Scientific publication output of an institution cited in patents, based on PATSTAT (http://www.epo.org) (Moya-Anegón and Chinchilla-Rodríguez, 2015).

Technological Impact (TI): The percentage of scientific publication output cited in patents. This percentage is calculated by considering the total output in the fields mentioned in patents, such as agriculture and biology; biochemistry; genetics and molecular biology; chemical engineering; chemistry; computer science; earth and planetary sciences; energy; engineering; environmental science; health professions; immunology and microbiology; materials science; mathematics; medicine; multidisciplinary; neuroscience; nursing; pharmacology, toxicology, and pharmaceuticals; physics and astronomy; social sciences; veterinary medicine based on PATSTAT (http://www.epo.org) (Moya-Anegón and Chinchilla-Rodríguez, 2015). Not dependent on size.

Patents (PT): The number of patent applications based on PATSTAT (http://www.epo.org).

3. Social Impact

Altmetrics (AM): This indicator has two components:

PlumX Metrics (weight: 70%): The number of documents with at least one mention in PlumX Metrics (https://plumanalytics.com). We consider mentions on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news, and comments (Reddit, Slideshare, Vimeo, or YouTube).

Mendeley (weight: 30%): The number of documents with at least one reader on Mendeley (https://www.mendeley.com).

Web Size (WS): The number of pages related to the institution's URL according to Google (https://www.google.com) (Aguillo et al., 2010).

Authority Score (AScore): The elements of this indicator can be considered as an evolution of the old inbound links indicator. It is a composite metric developed by Semrush to measure the overall quality and SEO performance of a website.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): The number of documents related to the United Nations' SDGs.

Female Scientific Talent Pool (FemSTP): The number of different female authors of scientific papers from an institution.

Impact on Public Policy—Overton (OV): The number of institutions' documents cited in policy documents, according to the Overton database.

Author: Bambang Riyanto - Staf Humas

Interviewee: Prof Dr Muryanto Amin, S.Sos, M.Si - Rektor USU

Photographer: Amri Simatupang - Amri Simatupang