对ARWU是一个现代化的界面。

ARWU排名稳定的一个原因是其指标的稳定性。30%的权重是基于奖励数量，而不是使用调查来衡量教师素质。另外60%的排名来自规模相关的产出指标。全世界的结果与预期一样。世界排名前十位的八位来自美国，另外两位来自英国，前10名中的七位仍保持在2020位。有一个不同的美国机构，一个来自意大利和瑞典。使用人均绩效（PCP）指标，有七家公司也名列前十表1显示了全球前十名大学和选定的亚太大学使用PCP的影响。在亚洲/Pac排名中，排名的差异更为明显。例如，韩国浦项大学的总体排名为400，PCP排名为101，京都大学的总体排名为37，使用PCP的排名为181

第二个变化是将学科排名重新打包为缩写词GRAS，即全球学术学科排名，与去年相同的54个学科。GRAS使用与ARWU不同的一组指标。请参阅指标、权重、学科机构数量以及科学学科网络映射的方法学。顶级水平以外的大学或不在前1000名的大学，都应该检查科目。作为一个例子，夏威夷马诺亚大学的总体排名为301-400，是大气科学的15。取消分级Singapore Management University is ranked in eight categories with a world ranking of 30 in Finance. It is only within individual subject rankings that searching for a non-top 1,000 university is possible.

ShanghaiRankings has had continuous and consistent coverage since 2003. Indicators have not changed. Thirty percent of the rankings are based on a university’s staff or alumni winning a limited number of awards. WOS’ s Arts & Humanities Index is not covered.

TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION (THE) WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS 2022

The 2022 rankings list 2,112 universities from 99 countries, an increase of almost 40% over 2021. 1,661 are ranked. 451 have “Reporter” status. Reporters have submitted their data but did not meet the ranking requirements. Many are not well-known institutions from developing countries. A few are world class professional schools such as London Business school and the US’ medical research Rockefeller University. Nine of THE’s top ten are the same as the first release of the THE/QS rankings in 2004.

In preparation for the release, THE posted an article on internationalisation. Lau writes about international student movements within Asia, taking data from the ICEF  Monitor. This prompted me to look at international metrics. Given Covid and political issues in 2020-2021 I asked:  Were there noticeable changes in rankings for International students and Outlook?  In January, THE released the “Most International Universities in the World”, using international students, international outlook, and survey data as the basis for the rankings. See Table 2 for international rankings. Five of the 10 universities with the highest percent of international students are from Europe, four from the Middle East and one from Macau. Because international outlook does not sort correctly, I selected top countries and their top five, expecting to check again in 2022. Macau University of Science and Technology is first in both categories in 2022 and 2021. Changes are not reflected in the data for the top universities.

CITATIONS

I had not planned on also drilling down into citations, until THE promoted China’s gain with increased articles on Covid- 19. (Bothwell).  Finding one reliable metric for citations is challenging. “How many citations” is size dependent. Other options are using citations per paper, per faculty, the average number of times a university’s work has been cited, percent of papers in a certain percentile, such as top 10%, or some field weighted average.

THE World uses average number of citations per paper.  11 universities receive a score of 100.  None are from the U.S. or China. Six U.S. universities are in the top 25 and none from China. The highest ranked Chinese University is Southern University of Science and Technology, ranked 33 in the world.   Nine of THE’s universities that scored 100 are not even ranked by QS!  Since citations are weighted at 30%, universities that do not score well in other categories find themselves ranked between 300-500 out of over 1,600 universities.

Other rankings use different metrics. QS uses citations per faculty.  Nine universities score 100, with six from the US, and the Indian Institute of Science, and two from South Korea. ARWU uses the number of highly cited researchers rather than a citation metric based on paper.  Seven are from the US, two from the UK, and Tsinghua is the highest from Asia/Pac in 5^th place.

See Appendix A and the three tables associated with the Appendix to see rankings based on THE’s subject “Medicine and Dentistry” and metrics for special topics from Elsevier’s SciVal and Clarivate’s InCItes.

COMPARING TOP UNIVERSITIES IN THE BIG THREE

These are the rankings that get the most coverage and have been around in the global arena the longest. Since the inception of ARWU in 2003 and THE/QS in 2004, more universities from more countries have been ranked, subjects have been added, and except for the breakup between QS and THE, metrics have remained stable as have the names at the top.  Chinese universities have moved up the ranks, U.S. institutions at the top have stayed the same since they have nowhere to go. See Table 4 for world comparisons with the first rankings and for current Asia/Pac ranks.

Since these rankings are so popular, target audiences tend to take them for granted. Over the seven years I have been writing this column, I have tried to play the role of the factual presenter of the news, answering questions such as “Who is number one in Asia/Pac”?   Now I am asking myself questions such as:

• How can a university score 100 on Citations and 8.6 on Research?
• Does having a high score on a citation metric based on papers or authors really tell the citation story? Is it better to have 42,000 citations for fewer than 200 papers produced in a five- year period or one million citations for 60,000 papers?
• Is having a large percentage of international students better than having a balance of international and local students?

UPDATES:  THE has announced changes to Impact Rankings Methodology, and released six of its 11 subjects by October 11, 2022 and its Wall Street Journal/THE US College rankings.  WST/THE ranks liberal arts colleges and Historically Black Colleges along with the usual suspects. Registration is required to read articles.  QS rolled out its Graduate Employability rankings.

RESOURCES

Bothwell, E. (2 Sep 2022).  World university rankings, 2020:  Results announced. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/world-university-rankings-2022-results-announced

ICEF Monitor (free daily and weekly updates).  Market intelligence for international student recruitment.  https://monitor.icef.com/about-icef-monitor/

Lau, J. (25 Aug 2021). Asia internationalises in its own backyard.  Affordable quality education and job opportunities are encouraging more Asian students to travel closer to home,, https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/asia-internationalises-its-own-backyard

Rankings links:

GRAS, Global Rankings of Academic Subjects (2 May 2021). https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/gras/2021

ShanghaiRanking’s GRAS methodology 2021 https://www.shanghairanking.com/methodology/gras/2021

ShanghaiRankings ((15 August 2021). ShanghaiRankings of academic universities 2021. Press Release https://www.shanghairanking.com/news/arwu/2021

THE (28 Jan 2021). Most international universities in the world, https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universities/most-international-universities-world

THE (26 Aug 2021). Methodology: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/world-university-rankings-2022-methodology

THE (1 Sep 2021). THE World Rankings 2022,

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2022/world-ranking#

QS Rankings 2022, https://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings

Ruth’s Rankings

A list of Ruth’s Rankings and News Updates is here.

*Ruth A. Pagell is emeritus faculty librarian at Emory University.  After working at Emory, she was the founding librarian of the Li Ka Shing Library at Singapore Management University and then adjunct faculty [teaching] in the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawaii.  She has written and spoken extensively on various aspects of librarianship, including contributing articles to ACCESS – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3238-9674