THES-QS Bias Chart

LevDau has been kind enough to reproduce my post "More Problems with Method" and to add a couple of very interesting graphs. What he has done is to calculate a bias ratio, which is the number of THE-QS reviewers reported on the topuniversities site divided by the number of highly cited researchers listed in Thomson ISI. The higher the number the more biased is the THES-QS review towards that country and the lower the number the more biased against. Some countries will not appear because they did not have anybody at all in the highly cited list.

If we chose a less rigorous definition of research expertise such as number of papers published rather than the number of highly cited researchers then the bias might be somewhat reduced. It would certainly not, however, be removed. In any case, if we are talking about the gold standard of ranking then the best researchers would surely be most qualified to judge the merits of their peers.

Bias in the THES-QS peer review (Selected Countries)

Iran 25
India 23.27
Singapore 23
Pakistan 23
China 19
Mexico 17
South Korea 9
Taiwan 3.22
Australia 1.82
Hong Kong 1.79
Finland 1.53
New Zealand 1.47
France 1
UK 0.86
Israel 0.77
Germany 0.43
Japan 0.22
USA 0.14