UPF, despite maintaining quite a stable civil service contract teaching staff, has tripled its scientific output when comparing 2004 and 2013, as reflected in the IUNE Observatory 2015 Report of the Alliance 4 Universities (A4U), focused on R&D&i and the Spanish University System.

The study, which has taken many of the output data from Web of Science (one of the major scientific output databases worldwide) shows how during the period analysed (2004-2013), Pompeu Fabra University has gone from 337 to 1,059 publications and from an index of 1.13 publications per lecturer to 3.39, far above the state average, which has risen from 0.42 to 0.77.

The report by the IUNE Observatory, which has published its fourth edition, analyses information from 73 public and private universities and includes more than forty indicators (many broken down by subject area), distributed across Teaching Staff, Recognition,  Scientific Activity, Innovation, Competitiveness and Training capacity.

Indicators led by UPF

The University is at the forefront in nine of these new indicators, most of which refer to relative research activity, either per lecturer or per 100 lecturers. They are as follow:

1- Publications per lecturer: with an average for the period of 2.32, ahead of UAB, with 1.92

2- Citations per lecturer: average of 36.60, while UAB is in second place with26.54

3- Projects of the National Plan per 100 lecturers: average for the period of 13.88, ahead of Carlos III University of Madrid (with 9.00).

4- Projects achieved at calls for European Framework Programmes per 100 lecturers: 5.4 average, while UPC is in second place with 1.75. Between 2004 and 2013, UPF multiplied this figure by six, rising from 1.67 to 10.90.

5-   Research staff training grants per 100 lecturers: average of 5.46, ahead of Carlos III University of Madrid, with 2.50

6-   University teaching staff grants per 100 lecturers: average of 10.32, ahead of UAB, with 7.50.

7- Juan de la Cierva contracts per 100 lecturers: average of 3.10. UAB is second with 0.89.

8- Ramon y Cajal contracts per 100 lecturers: average of 1.73, ahead of UAB, with 0.89.

9- Theses defended per 100 lecturers: Average of 32.22, ahead of the Autonomous University of Madrid, with 29.74. For this indicator, UPF increased from 12.71 in 2004 to 52.56 theses in 2013.

Despite not coming in first place UPF also obtains many good results for R&D contracts and consultancies and Revenue generated by licences per 100 lecturers, in which it ranks second in both cases, behind the Polytechnic University of Madrid and the Polytechnic University of Valencia, respectively.

The IUNE Observatory arose from the initiative of the Alliance 4 Universities (UPF, UAB, Carlos III and the UAM) and aims to provide valuable information to analyse the development of the Spanish university system. On an annual basis, it includes information broken down for each of the universities, and uses sources of information supplied by official agencies such as the National Institute of Statistics, the ministries of Education, Culture and Sport, and Economy and Competitiveness and the CDTI, among others.