Various metrics are used to measure the performance of universities. Among these metrics, measuring publication performance is one of the most common metrics. The aim of this study is to present an exemplary model for examining the academic performance of universities based on bibliometric data. In this context, the international publication performance of Van Yuzuncu Yil University was examined within the scope of scientific mapping and performance analysis using bibliometric and descriptive analyses. The data set was created using 8734 results by filtering only the peer-reviewed articles among all research studies whose institutional affiliation was Van Yuzuncu Yil University on the Web of Science (WOS) database. This study includes the bibliometric data of the articles located in SCI/SCI-Expanded, SSCI, ESCI and AHCI indexes until April 2022. When the most published journals, WOS research areas, keywords and bibliometric maps based on text data were examined, it was found that the research studies were mostly carried out in the fields of Health and Science. When the partnerships in co-authored articles were examined, it was explored that a significant number of publications were multi-authored and the partners work at YYU as well as at the institutions in the nearby geography. Also, it was seen that the publication citation rates are higher for the articles with international partnerships especially from developed countries. Accordingly, it is quite obvious that international partnerships contribute to the quality of research studies. In this study, YYU has been considered an exemplary case within the scope of performance evaluation based on bibliometric data. In future studies, it is thought that conducting comparative bibliometric studies with a university that exhibits a performance target may provide more information to decision makers.