Analysis of global research performance in education with multi-criteria decision-making methods

Purpose There is a lack of research in the literature evaluating the research performance of countries in the field of education. In addition, research performance is often analyzed using traditional methods. In this study, the research performance of countries in the field of education was analyzed with multi-criteria decision-making methods. Design/methodology/approach The research performance of 93 countries was examined with the data of the last 10 years from InCites Benchmarking and Analytics using productivity and impact indicators. In the research, CRITIC, MEREC and Entropy methods, which are among the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods, were used to weight the performance criteria objectively. Three different criteria weights were analyzed separately by ARAS, MABAC and TOPSIS methods. The different ranking values obtained were combined using the Borda function, and the final values were obtained. Research performance was analyzed using raw, population-normalized and gross domestic product (GDP) data. Findings The most important productivity indicator is the number of publications in the top 1%, while the most important publication impact indicator is “Impact Relative to World.” The USA, UK and Australia have the highest research performance in the analysis with raw data, and Macau, Australia and Hong Kong in the analysis are normalized to the population. In the analysis normalized to GDP, Greek Administration of Southern Cyprus, Hong Kong and Australia perform the best. The findings justify the use of more than one MCDM method to weight the criteria and rank the countries. Originality/value This study also revealed how MCDM methods can be used to measure research performance.