Monitoring the Scientific Productivity of Higher Education Institutions in Turkey: A Review of Current State and Suggestions

Abstract

In the rapidly developing and changing world, higher education institutions have taken their place among the institutions struggling in global competition conditions. With the educational processes, the opportunities they provide to their students, employees, researchers and society, and the values they create with these stakeholders, these institutions are in an effort to progress in the ranking steps. There are many university ranking systems adopted on international platforms, and the common point of these ranking systems is the priorities they give to the criteria for scientific productivity. At this point, authorities who want to move their institutions to upper levels need to closely and effectively monitor the relevant performance indicators.This study, which presents research in this context, reveals how institutions monitor their scientific productivity levels and how much they adopt implementation components and policies in well-developed institutions. Data obtained from one-to-one interviews with a representative sample group accompanied by a form and from online announcement channels of institutions are summarized and presented. In the light of the data, all situations that cause problems to occur are made more visible and solutions are suggested. General findings show that although performance monitoring processes differ from each other, they exist in every institution, but some important performance dimensions cannot be monitored by all institutions in an efficient way. For example, although particular academic performance indicators are taken into account, it is observed that there are deficiencies in clearly expressing the goals and policies towards the improvement of the indicator values in the strategic plans and following them on a field basis.