World-class university and Asia's top tier researchers

Abstract

University league tables and policies aimed at world-class standing are adopted in promoting excellence in universities both at a national and an institutional level. With a focus on the research productivity of academics, the connection between research productivity and university policies such as personnel policy and funding allocation has been raised a big issue. How this phenomenon of building world-class universities has impacted on the research productivity of academics and, in particular, highly productive academics? This empirical study of research productivity in four Asian higher education systems, that is, mainland China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) China, Japan, and South Korea, uses data from the Second International Survey of the Academic Profession and measures research productivity by number of scientific journal publications over a three-year period.