| Indicator | University Z-score | Average country Z-score |
|---|---|---|
|
Multi-affiliation
|
-1.566 | -0.785 |
|
Retracted Output
|
-0.061 | 0.056 |
|
Institutional Self-Citation
|
4.455 | 4.357 |
|
Discontinued Journals Output
|
2.745 | 2.278 |
|
Hyperauthored Output
|
-1.114 | -0.684 |
|
Leadership Impact Gap
|
-2.025 | -0.159 |
|
Hyperprolific Authors
|
-1.413 | -1.115 |
|
Institutional Journal Output
|
-0.268 | 0.154 |
|
Redundant Output
|
0.143 | 2.716 |
Zaporizhzhia National Technical University presents a profile of pronounced contrasts, with an overall integrity score of 0.279 reflecting both areas of exceptional governance and critical vulnerabilities. The institution demonstrates significant strengths in maintaining intellectual leadership, avoiding hyper-prolific authorship, and limiting the use of institutional journals, indicating robust internal controls in these domains. However, these positive aspects are severely counterbalanced by significant risks in institutional self-citation and a high rate of publication in discontinued journals. These weaknesses suggest systemic issues that could undermine the credibility of its research output. According to SCImago Institutions Rankings data, the university's strongest thematic areas include Environmental Science (ranked 5th in Ukraine), Physics and Astronomy (10th), and Earth and Planetary Sciences (13th). The identified integrity risks, particularly the inward-looking citation patterns and reliance on low-quality publication channels, directly threaten the long-term sustainability and international reputation of these key research fields. To safeguard its academic mission and build on its strengths, it is imperative that the university implements a targeted strategy to address these specific vulnerabilities, thereby ensuring its pursuit of excellence is founded on a bedrock of verifiable scientific integrity.
The institution's Z-score of -1.566 is well below the national average of -0.785. This demonstrates a commendable absence of risk signals related to affiliation practices, aligning with and even exceeding the low-risk standard observed nationally. While multiple affiliations can be a legitimate outcome of collaboration, the university's very low score indicates a clear process that avoids strategic attempts to inflate institutional credit or engage in “affiliation shopping,” ensuring that academic contributions are transparently and accurately attributed.
With a Z-score of -0.061, the institution maintains a low-risk profile, in stark contrast to the national average of 0.056, which falls into the medium-risk category. This suggests a notable degree of institutional resilience, where internal control mechanisms appear to successfully mitigate the systemic risks for retractions that are more prevalent in the country. A low rate indicates that quality control and supervision mechanisms prior to publication are functioning effectively, preventing the kind of recurring malpractice or lack of methodological rigor that can lead to a high volume of retractions and damage an institution's integrity culture.
The institution exhibits a critical Z-score of 4.455, slightly surpassing the already significant national average of 4.357. This positions the university as a leading contributor to a highly compromised national environment, flagging a major risk to its scientific credibility. A certain level of self-citation is natural, but this disproportionately high rate signals a concerning scientific isolation or an 'echo chamber' where the institution validates its own work without sufficient external scrutiny. This practice creates a severe risk of endogamous impact inflation, suggesting that the institution's perceived academic influence may be artificially oversized by internal dynamics rather than by genuine recognition from the global scientific community.
The institution's Z-score of 2.745 is in the significant risk category, amplifying the vulnerabilities already present in the national system, which has a medium-risk score of 2.278. This high proportion of publications in discontinued journals constitutes a critical alert regarding the due diligence applied in selecting dissemination channels. It indicates that a significant portion of the university's scientific production is being channeled through media that fail to meet international ethical or quality standards. This practice exposes the institution to severe reputational risks and suggests an urgent need to improve information literacy among its researchers to avoid wasting resources on 'predatory' or low-quality publications.
With a Z-score of -1.114, the institution demonstrates a more prudent profile than the national standard (-0.684), even though both are within a low-risk range. This indicates that the university manages its authorship processes with greater rigor than its national peers. By maintaining a lower rate of hyper-authored publications, the institution effectively mitigates the risk of author list inflation, thereby preserving individual accountability and transparency in its research contributions and distinguishing its collaborative work from practices like 'honorary' authorship.
The institution's Z-score of -2.025 is in the very low-risk category, a significant improvement over the country's low-risk average of -0.159. This result indicates an absence of risk signals and aligns with a national context of good practice. A very low score in this indicator is a strong sign of scientific sustainability and autonomy. It suggests that the institution's scientific prestige is structural and driven by its own internal capacity, rather than being dependent on external partners. This demonstrates that its excellence metrics are the result of genuine intellectual leadership, not just strategic positioning in collaborations.
The institution shows a total absence of risk signals in this area, with a Z-score of -1.413 that is even lower than the country's very low-risk average of -1.115. This operational silence indicates a healthy research environment where productivity is well-balanced with quality. By avoiding extreme individual publication volumes, the university effectively sidesteps the risks of coercive authorship, data fragmentation, or the assignment of authorship without meaningful intellectual contribution, reinforcing a culture that prioritizes the integrity of the scientific record over raw metrics.
The institution demonstrates a strong model of preventive isolation, with a very low-risk Z-score of -0.268 in a national context where this indicator represents a medium risk (Z-score of 0.154). This shows the university is not replicating the problematic risk dynamics observed in its environment. By avoiding excessive dependence on its in-house journals, the institution successfully mitigates conflicts of interest and the risk of academic endogamy. This practice ensures its scientific production is validated through independent external peer review, which is essential for achieving global visibility and credibility, rather than using internal channels as potential 'fast tracks' to inflate publication counts.
The institution's Z-score of 0.143 places it in the medium-risk category, but this represents a state of relative containment when compared to the country's critical Z-score of 2.716. Although risk signals for redundant publication exist within the university, it appears to operate with more order and control than the national average. This suggests that while there may be some instances of 'salami slicing'—dividing studies into minimal publishable units to artificially inflate productivity—the practice is not as systemic or widespread as it is elsewhere in the country. Nonetheless, it remains an area that requires monitoring to ensure that the focus stays on producing significant new knowledge rather than prioritizing publication volume.
