Abstract

The study aims to analyze the growth rate of scientific production and the citation-based impact of the Chilean University System. The analysis includes 49 571 papers that received 340 534 citations. The method consists of allometric or power law correlation. This is a robust method for comparing the growth rate of scientific production and the citation-based impact of science systems of vastly different sizes. The results show that the growth rate of scientific production and the citation-based impact of Chilean private universities are higher than that of public and public-private universities. The scientific production growth rate of Chilean private universities is 2.25 or 2(1.17) times with respect to public-private universities and 2.35 or 2(1.23) times with respect to public universities. The citation-based impact growth rate of Chilean private universities is 6.59 or 2(2.72) times with respect to the citation impact of public-private universities and 5.78 or 2(2.53) times with respect to the citation-based impact of public universities.