The THE Reputational Survey
Thomson Reuters, acting on behalf of Times Higher Education, have published an open letter to university administrators announcing the development of a new ranking system. They promise much. The new ranking is the only one that "seeks to fundamentally change the way data is collected and analyzed". They believe "this development underscores a major breakthrough within the rankings dialogue".
There is some good news. Finally, the inaccurate term "peer review" is being dropped to be replaced by "reputational survey". Also, according to a comment on a previous post from Phil Baty, Deputy Editor at THE, "we will be looking to focus the survey more on non-research elements. It allows us to get at the less tangible elements of university activity that can not be measured through numbers." This is very sensible.
The two points above are welcome but I still do not see anything very revolutionary about the forthcoming survey.
There is another question. Thomson Reuters are asking university administrators to encourage their researchers and colleagues to take part. This would seem to introduce an element of bias into the survey from the very start. How many university administrators will read the open letter? How many will act on it? Will there be as many in Japan as in England?
Richard, it is very interesting that you mention Japan here. This week, Thomson Reuters confirmed the appointment of the project manager for its global institutional profiles project, which will fuel the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. He is Simon Pratt, who has spent several years, very recently, working in Japan for Thomson Reuters. He speaks fluent Japanese too, so I'm confident that the Japense institutions will not be neglected. We're very pleased to have someone of Simon's callibre looking after the project from Thomson's side.
ReplyDeletePhil Baty, editor, Times Higher Education World University Rankings