ITS Research Intelligence

Portugal University Research Rankings

Name: Portugal University Research Rankings – ITS Research Solution
Creator: ITS Research Solution
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Compare Portugal universities using recent research output, citation impact, growth and a transparent research-performance score.

Research landscape

The current ITS Research Intelligence dataset contains 24 index-ready universities in Portugal. Across those institutions, the average five-year research output is approximately 5,785 works and the average five-year citation count is approximately 36,838. The average publication-growth signal is 17.2%. These figures describe the institutions that pass the public quality gate; they are not intended to represent every tertiary institution in the country.

Country rankings are useful for benchmarking because they reduce some of the structural differences that make global comparisons difficult. They still should not be treated as a complete assessment of institutional quality: teaching, student outcomes, funding levels, research field mix and institutional mission are outside this research-performance score. The value of the page is in seeing who is producing research, how that activity is changing, and where citation visibility is concentrated.

Top research universities in Portugal

Rank	University	Country	Score	5-year works	5-year citations	Growth
#1	University of Lisbon	Portugal	76.4	50,586	356,607	-20.3%
#2	Universidade do Porto	Portugal	76.1	50,018	318,503	-21.1%
#3	University of Coimbra	Portugal	73.8	31,307	189,693	-5.3%
#4	Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Coimbra	Portugal	54.2	987	3,053	97.7%
#5	Universidade Europeia	Portugal	51.2	1,227	5,748	1.7%
#6	National Statistical Institute of Portugal	Portugal	44.8	255	1,906	14.4%
#7	Escola de Negócios e Administração	Portugal	44.1	244	355	173.2%
#8	Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia	Portugal	44.0	863	1,094	-51.5%
#9	Universidade Sénior Contemporânea	Portugal	42.1	383	841	-9.0%
#10	Instituto Superior de Espinho	Portugal	41.7	126	194	228.0%
#11	Instituto Superior de Ciências Educativas	Portugal	40.8	221	675	25.0%
#12	Escola Superior de Saúde do Alcoitão	Portugal	40.3	280	501	5.1%
#13	Terra Scenica	Portugal	39.5	198	1,332	-15.1%
#14	Agrupamento de Escolas Nuno Álvares	Portugal	39.3	440	448	-46.5%
#15	Higher Institute of Police Sciences and Homeland Security	Portugal	38.9	163	401	56.9%
#16	Instituto Superior Autónomo de Estudos Politécnicos	Portugal	38.8	107	151	120.8%
#17	Instituto Superior Politécnico do Oeste	Portugal	38.7	148	571	-14.8%
#18	Instituto Superior de Educação e Trabalho	Portugal	35.3	160	130	25.5%
#19	Instituto de Estudos Superiores de Fafe LDA	Portugal	33.7	128	328	-38.2%
#20	Instituto Superior de Ciências da Informação e da Administração	Portugal	33.2	231	154	-67.9%
#21	Instituto Superior de Comunicação Empresarial	Portugal	30.9	105	113	-40.4%
#22	Instituto Superior de Línguas e Administração	Portugal	30.1	133	61	-50.0%
#23	Escola Superior de Enfermagem S. Francisco das Misericórdias	Portugal	29.6	115	99	0.0%

Transparent methodology

What the ITS Research Performance Score measures

The current score is intentionally research-specific. Thirty percent reflects five-year publication output, thirty percent five-year citations, twenty percent h-index, ten percent i10-index and ten percent five-year publication growth. Volume-based indicators are log-normalized before weighting so the largest universities do not dominate simply because of scale. Growth is bounded before entering the score so a tiny starting value cannot create an unrealistic advantage.

The score does not currently claim to measure teaching quality, student satisfaction, reputation, employability or finances. It also does not label the underlying citation totals as field-normalized impact. Future field-normalized modules should be added only when the underlying work-level calculations are available and validated. This separation keeps the ranking interpretable and prevents unsupported claims.

Source data is drawn from OpenAlex and linked to ROR identifiers. Both are open scholarly infrastructures. ITS Research Solution adds value through normalization, quality gates, trend calculations, ranking methodology, benchmarking and readable institution-level analysis.