UOC among the 200 best Ibero-American universities in terms of research, innovation and social impact

Every year, Ibero-American higher education institutions participate in the Ranking Iberoamericano de Instituciones de Educación Superior, SIR Iber report published by SCImago Research Group (SRG) and the scientific journal El Profesional de la Información. In it, SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) rates these universities performance in terms of research, innovation and social impact. In the 2020 report, the 12th edition, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) took the 176th seat out of the 1,748 Ibero-American institutions analysed, a position that has remained relatively stable in recent years, a testament to the University's high degree of scientific output.

The report also showed that countries such as Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Colombia are leaders in scientific output, publishing over 60,000 research papers between 2014 and 2018, followed by Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia as the countries with emerging outputs. The data analysed also spoke to the institutions' level of social engagement through their scientific, economic and social contributions, which have helped with decision-making, public and institutional policy development and the creation of route maps to promote the universities' research activity and to help them to continuously improve.

In order to be included in the SIR Iber report, higher education institutions must have published at least one document in a Scopus-indexed journal during the period analysed. In the 2020 edition, in addition to the 17 web visibility- and altmetrics-based indicators for research, innovation and social impact, the study also provides information on each institution's performance in terms of outcomes, excellence, leadership, open access and publications management. There is also a new impact indicator called Weighted Citation Normalized (WCN) which measures a publication's impact based on the number of thematic categories the corresponding scientific journal has.

The UOC stands out in the ranking for the indicators Normalized Impact (the basic indicator for quality scientific output), open access and international cooperation, which measures scientific output as the product of participation from people from different countries, universities and research centres.