This report is both an update and an extension of two previous reports with the same title: “Comparing Research at Nordic Universities using Bibliometric Indicators” from 2011 and 2014. With the current report’s use of more years, more institutions and more subject fields, the figures are not directly comparable to the figures in the former two. Therefore, it should not be seen as an update of the former two reports; rather it replaces these.

The main conclusion of the report is that we find relatively stable differences between the Nordic universities, university colleges and university hospitals. We find different research profiles and specialisations, and we find institutions with different volumes of research activity. By describing these differences, we want to bring attention to dimensions that one-dimensional global university rankings cannot capture.

Some Nordic higher education institutions score on a very high international level with regard to citation impact and shares of highly cited papers, at least in some of the major areas of research, while most Nordic institutions do not, although the majority of them perform above the world average. “World class” research is being conducted at a few Nordic institutions, but not at most of them.