COMPARATIVE PERFORMANCE EVALUATION AND FORECASTING OF THE URMIA CITY UNIVERSITIES IN UNIVERSITY RANKINGS BASED ON RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY

The aim of this study was to conduct a comparative evaluation of performance and forecast the Urmia city universities in university rankings based on data from the WOS database.

The present study is an applied research based on the research goals and a comparative study in terms of research method. The statistical population consisted of all documents (from 1980 to 11/08/2021) indexed in the WOS database and attributed to "Iran". The criterion for analyzing the outputs was the proposed indicators of Incites.

The results showed that 627972 documents have been indexed in the WOS citation database by scientific organizations affiliated to Iran. Urmia University (with 7442 Documents) has the highest number of documents indexed in the WOS. Urmia University of Technology with regards to the indicators of "citation impact", "% Docs Cited", " % Documents in Top 1% ", " % Documents in Top 10% ", " % Documents in Q1 Journals", and " % International Collaborations" shows the best performance. Urmia University of Medical Sciences shows the best performance in " % Industry Collaborations" and " % Domestic Collaborations" indicators. While the Urmia University shows the best performance in the "% Organization only Collaborations" and “% Corresponding Author (2008-2021)" indicators.

The quality of research conducted in Urmia city universities is not appropriate. Their performance was relatively poor in the international, national, and industrial interactions. It seems that the universities need a good strategy in publishing research findings. Considering all these factors, it can be predicted that their ranking in Iran and worldwide would be weak.