Center for world university rankings

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Academic rankings of universities or academic ranking of universities are ordered lists that classify and rank universities and institutions of higher education and research, according to a rigorous scientific methodology of bibliometric type that includes objective, quantifiable and reproducible criteria, hence the name «academic».

The British newspaper The Times publishes its own supplement called «Higher Education Supplement» (THES)[6] which is an academic ranking with an objective methodology and with the following assessments: 60% to the «quality of research», 10% to the ability of a graduate to obtain employment, 10% to the «international presence» and 20% to the student/academic ratio.

The CWTS Leiden Ranking is an annual ranking of universities worldwide based exclusively on bibliometric indicators. The rankings are compiled by the Center for Science and Technology Studies (Dutch: Centrum voor Wetenschap en Technologische Studies, CWTS) of Leiden University in the Netherlands. The Thomson Reuters bibliographic database, Web of Science, is used as a source of publication and citation data.

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Interview with Mr. Nian Cai Liu, professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University and coordinator of the first worldwide report on university rankings, the Academic Ranking of World Universities. The report, which first appeared in 2003, is now considered one of the most influential publications in the field.

How can ranking systems take into account other factors, for example, the fact that in some countries research is not conducted in English? How might they assess competencies in the social sciences and humanities, which are difficult to quantify? And what about elements of the social context, such as cultural differences?

«Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought compete with each other.» Establishing rankings improves each institution’s place in the hierarchy. The International Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence (IREG) should promote and publicize its audits so that institutions feel compelled to constantly improve. At the same time, ranking bodies should strengthen research and improve ranking methods.

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The development of rankings in the form of «league tables» began in the United States in the 1980s, continued in the United Kingdom and had a narrower focus: the world of economics and business. Indeed, the first rankings sought to identify the best business schools. Those first rankings were developed by economic publications such as Business Week, U.S. News & World Report, Financial Times, The Economist or the Wall Street Journal (Pérez-Esparrells and Gómez-Sancho, 2010).

Choosing a variable to order a reality is the result of a previous conceptualization about its meaning and relevance. This becomes more evident when dealing with relational indicators that involve a combination of variables, which makes their value load and significant hypotheses more complex. It is necessary to understand what an indicator says (which variables it combines), what it does not say (which possibly significant variables have not been taken into account) and why it says it; that is, what is the model vision that gives significance to the data. The fact that publications in the Science Citation Index or Scopus are of great relevance in determining the level of quality of universities reflects a certain vision of what is understood by this concept, largely assimilated to excellence in research, which assumes, as an ideal normative model, that of the scientific university. However, things are more complex, since, in terms of research evaluation, the concept of «quality» is fluid and several empirical studies have shown that scientists define quality in very different ways and even with antagonistic approaches. For example, is social relevance part of the concept of research quality? An affirmative answer would imply that it is essential to take social contexts into account and that it would be impossible to measure quality with bibliometrics alone.

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These are some of the most common objective bibliometric criteria in the elaboration of rankings. These criteria are not provided directly by the institutions and are therefore objectively reliable, the analyses based on them are reproducible and rigorous:[1][2] These are criteria based on information provided by the universities in a discretionary manner.

These are criteria based on information provided by universities on a discretionary basis. They are therefore potentially subject to manipulation, as they are not always verifiable. Much of this information is considered «proprietary» and therefore rankings based on it are not entirely reproducible. These measures do not so much estimate the impact and quality of institutions, but rather their infrastructure, budget and wealth; some examples are:

The British newspaper The Times publishes a supplement called «Higher Education Supplement» THES[3] which is an academic ranking with an objective methodology (but not all bibliometric) and with the following valuations: 60% to «research quality», 10% to the ability of a graduate to obtain employment, 10% to «international presence» and 20% to the student/academic ratio.