Global Institutional Profiles Project

Thomson Reuters have set up a new site here. It contains information, although not much so far, about the new Times Higher ranking system.

They will "address industry concerns over current profile systems... The 21st century research institution has many fluid layers, and Thomson Reuters is committed to developing an equally robust and dynamic dataset".

Notice that they are talking about research institutions as though universities do nothing but research and that they refer to higher education as an industry.

The page provides some hints about what might be included in the forthcoming rankings: peer review, scholarly outputs, citation patterns, funding levels and faculty characteristics.

I do not know whether there is any significance in the absence of internationalisation and faculty student ratio from the list.

The page could have done with some editing. There are too many barely meaningful adjectives -- robust, dynamic, flexible, data-driven, globally significant. And exactly what is a "fluid layer"?