Comment on the THE rankings
From The Age (Australia)
Les Field, the deputy vice-chancellor (research) at the University of NSW, said the new Times methodology had produced some curious results, such as Hong Kong Baptist University ranking close behind Harvard on citations.
''There are some anomalies which to my mind don't pass the reasonableness test,'' he said.
And Alexandria University, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Bilkent University, William & Mary, Royal Holloway, University of Barcelona, University of Adelaide.
And the University of Oslo is not even on the ranking, due to a mistake in the count of academic staff.
ReplyDeleteIn the last 30 years the major task that faced bibliometricians was to standardize the authors' affiliations and still today it is not solved. So, it is surprising that rankers with little experience in the field are now able to collect correct data for a large amount of institutions. As the THE ranking problem shows, the bibliometric data of such rankings as ARWU, HEEACT, Scimago or Western Australia are simply not valid.
ReplyDeleteWarwick University doesn't even make it into the top 200, which is just bizarre, given that it usually ranks somewhere between 50 and 80 on world rankings. This is just one anomaly that I am particularly sensitive to (I am faculty at Warwick), but it illustrates how this ranking is deeply flawed.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there's the fact that their citation data is obviously crap. Besides the anomaly of Alexandria, you will note that in arts and humanities, the highest ranking institution (Harvard) has a citation score of 55%. In all other areas, the score of high-ranking institutions is close to 100%. Since the publishing culture of mathematics is closer to that of the humanities than to that of the rest of the sciences, and since mathematics is Warwick's strongest science department, this may partly explain their poor ranking.
Another anomaly that hasn't been pointed out yet is that the University of Innsbruck shows up as number 2 for "international representation" of their students and faculty. This is a joke. I know Innsbruck since some of my family still lives in that area. Yes, there are certainly some international students and faculty, but they are from southern Germany and maybe from the eastern part of Switzerland. Not quite the cultural melting pot that the label suggests....
Warwick University doesn't even make it into the top 200, which is just bizarre, given that it usually ranks somewhere between 50 and 80 on world rankings. This is just one anomaly that I am particularly sensitive to (I am faculty at Warwick), but it illustrates how this ranking is deeply flawed.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there's the fact that their citation data is obviously crap. Besides the anomaly of Alexandria, you will note that in arts and humanities, the highest ranking institution (Harvard) has a citation score of 55%. In all other areas, the score of high-ranking institutions is close to 100%. Since the publishing culture of mathematics is closer to that of the humanities than to that of the rest of the sciences, and since mathematics is Warwick's strongest science department, this may partly explain their poor ranking.
Another anomaly that hasn't been pointed out yet is that the University of Innsbruck shows up as number 2 for "international representation" of their students and faculty. This is a joke. I know Innsbruck since some of my family still lives in that area. Yes, there are certainly some international students and faculty, but they are from southern Germany and maybe from the eastern part of Switzerland. Not quite the cultural melting pot that the label suggests....
Just to note: Western Australia is not ranked because it declined to be ranked not because of a data error.
ReplyDeleteOslo's Data is incorrect, however, this is the data that Oslo supplied and confirmed was correct.
Very nice n informative post. thanks for this all great information!
ReplyDeletei would be very useful for us!
nice work Keep it up!