The development programs of Russian universities contain many different target indicators. Many of these indicators are focused on the development of the research activities. In the context of limited financial resources for development, the question of an effective system of target indicators is very important. To construct such a system of target indicators, three conditions must be met: 1) these target indicators do not contradict each other; 2) there are indicators with a positive effect on economic indicators; 3) subject areas are taken into account.The aim of the research. This study is aimed to study linear correlation dependencies between the main indicators measuring the university’s publication activity and other scientometric, social and structural indicators.Materials and methods. The study used economic, structural and scientometric data for 49 largest universities in Russia over 4 years, downloaded from monitoring the performance of educational institutions of higher education and the SciVal analytical tool.Results. As part of the research, it was studied which variables are correlated with the taken scientometric variables. Due to the large number of variables involved in the primary analysis, the table contains only those variables that correlate with the variables under consideration with a correlation coefficient of more than 0.3 modulus.Conclusion. The results obtained allow both to resolve the contradiction of the simultaneous increase in the number and quality of publications, and to highlight a number of links between scientometric indicators and indicators of university economics, internationalization and quality of admission. Knowledge of these dependencies is useful for compiling university development programs that do not contain internal contradictions. The conclusions obtained make it possible to increase the efficiency of construction a system of university target indicators in the research field in three areas: compiling the university development program with consistent target indicators, the inclusion of indicators with a positive impact on economic indicators, taking into account the peculiarities of the field of science and education in which the university operates.