NKUA ranks first among Greek Universities in research output, according to data from Elsevier’s Scopus bibliographic database

Data collected recently from Elsevier’s Scopus bibliographic database and referring to the period ending on 13 February 2023 re-confirm the significant research output of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. These data place the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens first overall among Greek Universities—with 94,175 research papers—and second in the number of authors (see Table 1). Further analysis of the data also demonstrates that:

1. NKUA has 5.4 times more publications than the average of all Greek Higher Educational Institutions.
2. By early 2022 NKUA accounted for 22% of the combined publications of all 25 Greek Higher Educational Institutions.
3. As illustrated in Figure 1, which has been generated through Scopus to present the percentage distribution of the NKUA’s research papers by subject area, 30.4% of NKUA’s research papers come from Medicine. Following this are Biochemistry, Genetics, and Molecular Biology, with 10.4% of research papers, and Physics and Astronomy, with 8.5%.

Table 1: Greek Universities’ research output according to Scopus (February 2023)

	Universities	Total number of publications	Total number of authors	Number of publications per author	Subject area with the highest percentage of publications	Percentage of publications in the most published subject area
1	National and Kapodistrian University of Athens	94,175	14,247	6.61	Medicine	30.4
2	Aristotle University of Thessaloniki	76,995	16,222	4.74	Medicine	16.1
3	National Technical University of Athens	46,790	8,400	5.93	Engineering	24.4
4	University of Patras	42,486	7,294	5.82	Engineering	15.8
5	University of Ioannina	27,811	3,283	8.47	Medicine	17.6
6	University of Crete	26,107	3,202	8.15	Medicine	17.1
7	University of Thessaly	19,129	4,204	4.55	Medicine	19
8	Democritus University of Thrace	16,817	3,465	4.85	Medicine	18.6
9	University of the Aegean	10,059	1,907	5.27	Computer Science	17.2
10	Agricultural University of Athens	8,814	2,652	3.32	Agricultural and Biological Sciences	31.3
11	Technical University of Crete	7,901	1,613	4.90	Engineering	20.6
12	University of West Attica	9,765	2,544	3.84	Medicine	14.2
13	University of Piraeus	7,243	1,234	5.87	Computer Science	26.3
14	Athens University of Economics and Business	6,735	1,031	6.53	Computer Science	23.1
15	International Hellenic University	6,375	964	6.61	Computer Science	14.1
16	University of Macedonia	4,659	917	5.08	Computer Science	23.1
17	Harokopio University of Athens	4,459	959	4.64	Medicine	27.5
18	University of Western Macedonia	4,276	960	4.45	Engineering	17
19	Hellenic Mediterranean University	3,808	1,021	3.73	Engineering	15.7
20	Hellenic Open University	3,791	1,002	3.78	Computer Science	15.2
21	University of the Peloponnese	3,425	656	5.22	Computer Science	20.5
22	Ionian University	2,052	471	4.35	Computer Science	33.4
23	Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences	1,652	442	3.73	Social Sciences	30
24	School of Pedagogical and Technological Education	913	148	6.16	Engineering	29.8
25	Athens School of Fine Arts	48	24	2	Arts and Humanities	35.9
	TOTAL	436,285	78,862
	AVERAGE	17,451	3,155	5.53

Figure 1: Percentage distribution of the NKUA’s research papers by subject area

Scopus is one of the most popular and comprehensive literature search databases. It includes over 36,377 journal titles and 335,000 book titles from 11,678 global publishers, 97 million records (78% of which come complete with an abstract), more than 5.3 million conference papers, and roughly 1.8 billion citations from 1970 onwards. It is generally regarded as the world’s largest citation and abstract database of authoritative international literature, providing users-researchers with powerful discovery and analytics tools. Scopus covers a variety of subjects, including Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Engineering, Social Sciences, Psychology, Economics, Biology, Agricultural Sciences, Environmental Science, and many more.

The staff of our University’s Quality Assurance Unit collected and processed Scopus data for NKUA.

Thanos Dimopoulos
Rector of NKUA