Postiglione, G. A., & Arimoto, A. (2015). Building research universities in East Asia. Higher Education, 70(2), 151-153.

The challenge for the eastern Asian region in the years to come is to forge mutually benecial cross-border partnerships and programs of teaching and research to help ensure that Asia will become a centerpiece for the worlds knowledge production and innovation by 2050. This is no small order. While Asias top-tier universities have made excellence a priority, only Singapore and Hong Kong have been able to ensure quality across the entire higher education system.


Horta, H., & Santos, J. M. (2016). The impact of publishing during PhD studies on career research publication, visibility, and collaborations. Research in Higher Education, 57(1), 28-50.

This study analyzes the impact that publishing during the period of PhD study has on researchers’ future knowledge production, impact, and co-authorship. The analysis is based on a representative sample of PhDs from all fields of science working in Portugal. For each researcher in the dataset, we compiled a lifetime publication record and respective meta-data retrieved from Thomson Reuters Web of Science. Our results extend the previous literature by showing that those who publish during their PhD have greater research production and productivity, and greater numbers of yearly citations and citations throughout their career compared to those who did not publish during their PhD. Moreover, it is found that those who publish during their PhD are more adept to publish single-authored publications and engage in publications with peers based abroad, thus suggesting both higher levels of scientific autonomy and international collaboration dynamics.


Jung, J., & Horta, H. (2013). Higher Education Research in Asia: a Publication and Co‐Publication Analysis. Higher Education Quarterly, 67(4), 398-419.

This study explores higher education research in Asia. Drawing on scientometrics, the mapping of science and social network analysis, this paper examines the publications of 38 specialised journals on higher education over the past three decades. The findings indicate a growing number of higher education research publications but the proportion of Asian publications in relation to the total world publications in higher education research remains stationary. The higher education research community in Asia is heavily concentrated in a few countries and universities, resting on a relatively small number of core scholars who publish research in the international specialised higher education journals. In response to increasing challenges in Asian higher education systems, the paper suggests that the higher education research community in Asia needs to be expanded and include more regional and international collaborations.


Horta, H., Jung, J., & Yonezawa, A. (2015). Higher Education Research in East Asia: Regional and National Evolution and Path-Dependencies. Higher Education Policy, 28%