Clustering of UK universities based on the research productivity of psychology departments

Abstract

Higher education institutions in the UK have organised into mission groups for the advocacy of shared interests and ideologies. Although research productivity is claimed as a key point of difference between these groups, this claim has received relatively little empirical scrutiny. The current study examined the clustering of UK universities based on the research productivity of academic psychologists. It found evidence for the Russell Group’s (RG’s) claim that it represents leading, research-intensive universities, at least with respects to the discipline of psychology. Productivity metrics of a representative sample of 1339 academic psychologists were extracted from Scopus and Scimago database and were averaged to derive department level productivity indicators. Results from cluster analysis provided evidence in favour of RG’s research superiority claim. Cluster level averages of the cluster comprising RG universities were approximately 50–300% higher than those of the cluster comprising non-RG universities. As anticipated, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge surpassed all others to form separate clusters representing an ‘elite’ within the RG.