Understanding the SINTA Affiliation Index

This post is for lecturers, researchers, and anyone who keeps hearing 'SINTA Score' in meetings but secretly has no idea what it actually means.

What is SINTA?

SINTA stands for Science and Technology Index. It is a web-based system built by the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology (Kemdiktisaintek) to measure the performance of researchers, institutions, and journals in Indonesia.

Think of it like a national scoreboard for academic productivity. It pulls data from Scopus, Web of Science (WoS), Google Scholar, and Garuda (Indonesia's own journal indexing system), then crunches everything into scores and rankings.

There are three main things SINTA measures:

• Author Score: How productive and impactful are you as an individual researcher?
• Affiliation Score: How productive and impactful is your institution as a whole?
• Journal Metrics: How good are the journals where Indonesian researchers publish?

This post focuses on the second one: the Affiliation Score, a.k.a. the Affiliation Index.

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So, What Exactly is the Affiliation Index?

The SINTA Affiliation Index is basically a collective score that represents the research performance of a university or institution. It is calculated by aggregating the individual SINTA Scores of all verified authors (lecturers and researchers) affiliated with that institution.

In simple terms:

Your institution's Affiliation Score = the sum of all your lecturers' contributions, with some rules and limitations applied.

It is not just "add everyone's score together." There are caps, weights, and normalization involved. But the core idea is simple: the more your lecturers publish in good journals, get cited, and contribute to research, the higher your institution climbs.

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How is It Calculated?

According to the official SINTA FAQ, the SINTA Score formula (for both Author and Affiliation) follows this pattern:

W_A × A + W_B × B + W_C × C + W_D × D + W_E × E

For the Author Score, the components and weights are:

Component	Code	Weight (W)
Scopus Journal Articles	A	Q1=40, Q2=40, Q3=35, Q4=30, No-Q=30
Scopus Non-Journal Documents	B	15
Scopus Citations	C	4
Google Scholar Citations	D	0.5
SINTA-accredited Journal Articles (S1-S6)	E	S1=25 (non-Scopus), S2=25, S3=20, S4=20, S5=15, S6=15

Google Scholar citations are capped at 1,000 per article. If your article has more than 1,000 citations, SINTA counts it as 1,000.

For the Affiliation Score, the components are the same as the Author Score, with one addition: the number of accredited journals (S1-S6) owned by the institution, weighted as S1=40, S2=25, S3-S6=15.

The Affiliation Score also applies a limitation formula:

Limit = Number of Authors × Fairness Factor × 3

This prevents one highly productive researcher from carrying the entire university's score alone. It ensures the score reflects collective effort across the institution.

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What Counts Toward the Score?

Not all publications are treated equally. The scoring system gives different weights based on:

1. Indexing Level: Scopus articles get the highest weight, followed by WoS, then Garuda (accredited national journals), then Google Scholar
2. Authorship Role: Single author gets the most points, followed by first author, then member (co-author). Being listed as the 14th author of a paper is not the same as being the one who actually wrote it
3. Journal Quality: For Scopus, Q1 journals score higher than Q4. For Garuda, S1-accredited journals score higher than S6
4. Publication Limits: You cannot just spam papers. There are caps per year. For international journals (Scopus/WoS), the limit is 2 publications per year as single/first author, and 4 as member author. For Garuda journals, similar limits apply
5. Citations: Both Scopus citations and WoS citations contribute directly to the score, with no publication limit on citation-based components

There is also a 3-Year Score and an Overall Score. The 3-Year Score only counts publications from the last three years (current year minus 1 to current year minus 3). The Overall Score counts everything.

For grant applications (that the funds from the Gov), the 3-Year Score often matters more because it reflects recent productivity, not just lifetime achievement.

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Why Does It Matter?

Three reasons:

1. University Clustering

The Ministry uses SINTA Affiliation data as one of the factors to cluster universities into performance tiers: Mandiri, Utama, Madya, Pratama, and Binaan. Your cluster determines how much research funding you are eligible for and what types of grants you can apply to. Higher cluster = more access to competitive grants.

2. Grant Eligibility

Many research grant schemes require principal investigators to have a minimum SINTA Score. For example, some schemes require at least 150 for science and technology fields, or 50 for social sciences and humanities. If your lecturers do not meet the threshold, they cannot even apply.

3. Institutional Reputation

SINTA rankings are public. Everyone can see where your university stands compared to others. It affects perception, influences prospective students, and plays a role in partnership opportunities.

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Top Affiliations

Go to sinta.kemdiktisaintek.go.id/affiliations, sort by SINTA Score 3 Years, and look at the top 10. You will probably expect to see UGM, IPB, UNAIR, UI, ITS, ITB, UB. And yes, they are all there.

But look at rank #4.

Universitas Muhammadiyah Sidoarjo (UMSIDA).

A private university from Sidoarjo, East Java. 38 departments. 263 verified authors. Sitting at rank #4 nationally with a 3-Year Score of 1,278,305, above Universitas Indonesia (1,201,343 with 3,113 authors), UNDIP, ITS, UB, ITB, and UNHAS.

To put that in perspective: UI has 270 departments and 3,113 authors. ITB has 139 departments and 1,736 authors. UB has 204 departments and 2,676 authors. UMSIDA did it with 263 people.

Here is the current top 10 based on SINTA Score 3 Years:

Rank	Institution	Score 3Yr	Authors
1	Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM)	1,678,814	3,607
2	Institut Pertanian Bogor (IPB)	1,415,701	1,653
3	Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR)	1,359,962	2,236
4	Universitas Muhammadiyah Sidoarjo (UMSIDA)	1,278,305	263
5	Universitas Indonesia (UI)	1,201,343	3,113
6	Universitas Diponegoro (UNDIP)	1,016,085	1,969
7	Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS)	1,013,116	1,289
8	Universitas Brawijaya (UB)	848,526	2,676
9	Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB)	822,283	1,736
10	Universitas Hasanuddin (UNHAS)	780,909	2,316

UMSIDA is also the only Perguruan Tinggi Muhammadiyah dan 'Aisyiyah (PTMA) in the top five. Founded in 2000, only 26 years old compared to decades-old national universities around them.

This is worth noting because the Affiliation Score is not purely about how many lecturers you have. The limitation formula and per-author caps mean that a smaller institution with consistently productive and well-publishing researchers can score higher than a larger institution where only a fraction of lecturers actively contribute.

263 authors. Rank #4. That is what focused, collective effort looks like in the SINTA system.

The ranking is not just about size. SINTA also calculates a Productivity Score which normalizes the output against the number of active lecturers. UMSIDA is a clear example of that principle working in practice.

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What Can You Actually Do About It?

If you are a UMSIDA student or lecturer reading this, you already know the numbers. Rank #4 nationally with 263 authors. That did not happen by accident. It happened because people in this institution chose to show up consistently.

But rankings move. The 3-Year Score window keeps shifting. What got UMSIDA to #4 today will expire from the calculation in a few years. So the question is not "how did we get here?" but "how do we stay here, and go further?"

Here are some things you can do:

1. If you are a student: your thesis and publications matter. When your work gets published in an accredited journal, it contributes to your supervisor's score, which contributes to UMSIDA's Affiliation Score. Write well. Aim for SINTA-accredited or Scopus-indexed journals, not just any journal that accepts submissions
2. If you are a lecturer: get verified on SINTA if you have not already. Go to sinta.kemdiktisaintek.go.id and register. No verification means your publications do not count toward the Affiliation Score
3. Clean up your Google Scholar profile. SINTA pulls data from Google Scholar. If your GS profile has invalid publications (books listed as journal articles, duplicates, or papers where your name does not actually appear), the verifier will not sync your data. SINTA Score stays at zero
4. Publish strategically. One Q1 Scopus article as first author (24 points) is worth more than six unaccredited Garuda papers as member author (4 points each = 24 points, but you hit the cap faster). Quality over quantity
5. Collaborate across institutions. SINTA tracks collaboration networks. Co-authorship with researchers from other universities can strengthen both individual and affiliation scores
6. Keep the pace. 263 authors producing at this level is remarkable. But if even a portion of those authors slow down, the 3-Year Score will drop noticeably because the team is small. Consistency is what makes a small team competitive against institutions with 10 times more people

The fact that UMSIDA is where it is right now proves that a focused group can compete at the national level. The challenge is sustaining it.

If you are stuck in that "I do not know where to start" moment, just make a list. Make an "I-want-to-research-this" list.

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One More Thing

SINTA is not perfect. No ranking system is. It favors quantity-adjacent metrics, it has quirks in how it handles multi-indexed publications, and the verification process can be slow. But it is the system we have, and understanding how it works is more useful than ignoring it.

The score reflects your contribution to knowledge, but it does not define your worth as a researcher or educator. Understand how it works. Use it wisely. Then go back to doing research that actually matters.Let me know if you want to hear some advice or guidance for being a researcher.