Update on changes in ranking methodology

Times Higher Education (THE) have been preparing the ground for methodological changes in their world rankings. A recent article by Phil Baty  announced that the new world rankings scheduled for September 30 will not count the citations to 649 papers, mainly in particle physics, with more than 1000 authors.

This is perhaps the best that is technically and/or commercially feasible at this moment but it is far from satisfactory. Some of these publications are dealing with the most basic questions about the nature of physical reality and it is a serious distortion not to include them in the ranking methodology. There have been complaints about this. Pavel Krokovny's comment was noted in a previous post while Mete Yeyisoglu argues that:

"Fractional counting is the ultimate solution. I wish you could have worked it out to use fractional counting for the 2015-16 rankings.
The current interim approach you came up with is objectionable.
Why 1,000 authors? How was the limit set? What about 999 authored-articles?
Although the institution I work for will probably benefit from this interim approach, I think you should have kept the same old methodology until you come up with an ultimate solution.
This year's interim fluctuation will adversely affect the image of university rankings."

Baty provides a reasonable answer to the question why the cut-off point is 1,000 authors.

But there is a fundamental issue developing here that goes beyond ranking procedure. The concept of authorship of a philosophy paper written entirely by a single person or a sociological study from a small research team is very different from that of the huge multi-national capital and labour intensive publications in which the number of collaborating institutions exceeds the number of  paragraphs and there are more authors than sentences.

Fractional counting does seem to be the only fair and sensible way forward and it is now apparently on THE's agenda although they have still not committed themselves.

The objection could be raised that while the current THE system gives a huge reward to even the least significant contributing institution, fractional counting would give major research universities insufficient credit for their role in important research projects.

A long term solution might be to draw a distinction between the contributors to and the authors of the mega papers. For most publications there would be no need to draw such a distinction but for those with some sort of input from dozens, hundreds or thousands of people it might be feasible for to allot half the credit to all those who had anything to do with the project and the other half to those who meet the standard criteria of authorship. There would no doubt be a lot of politicking about who gets the credit but that would be nothing new.

Duncan Ross, the new Data and Analytics Director at THE, seems to be thinking along these lines.

"In the longer term there are one technical and one structural approach that would be viable.  The technical approach is to use a fractional counting approach (2932 authors? Well you each get 0.034% of the credit).  The structural approach is more of a long term solution: to persuade the academic community to adopt metadata that adequately explains the relationship of individuals to the paper that they are ‘authoring’.  Unfortunately I’m not holding my breath on that one."

The counting of citations to mega papers is not the only problem with the THE citations indicator. Another is the practice of giving a boost to universities in underperforming countries. Another item by Phil Baty quotes this justification from Thomson Reuters, THE's former data partner.

“The concept of the regional modification is to overcome the differences between publication and citation behaviour between different countries and regions. For example some regions will have English as their primary language and all the publications will be in English, this will give them an advantage over a region that publishes some of its papers in other languages (because non-English publications will have a limited audience of readers and therefore a limited ability to be cited). There are also factors to consider such as the size of the research network in that region, the ability of its researchers and academics to network at conferences and the local research, evaluation and funding policies that may influence publishing practice.”

THE now appear to agree that this is indefensible in the long run and hope that a more inclusive academic survey and the shift to Scopus, with broader coverage than the Web of Science, will lead to this adjustment being phased out.

It is a bit odd that TR and THE should have introduced income, in three separate indicators, and international outlook, in another three, as markers of excellence, but then included a regional modification to compensate for limited funding and international contacts.

THE are to be congratulated for having put fractional counting and phasing out the regional modification on their agenda. Let's hope it doesn't take too long.

While we are on the topic, there are some more things about the citation indicator to think about . First, to repeat a couple of points mentioned in the earlier post.

• Reducing the number of fields or doing away with normalisation by year of citation. The more boxes into which any given citation can be dropped the greater the chance of statistical anomalies when a cluster of citations meets a low world average of citations for that particular year of citations, year of publication and field (300 in Scopus?)

• Reducing the weighting for this indicator. Perhaps citations per paper normalized by field is a useful instrument for comparing the quality of research of MIT, Caltech, Harvard and the like but it might be of little value when comparing the research performance of Panjab University and IIT Bombay or Istanbul University and  Bogazici.

Some other things THE could think about.

• Adding a measure of overall research impact, perhaps simply by counting citations. At the very least stop calling field- and year- normalised regionally modified citations per paper a measure of research impact. Call it research quality or something like that.

• Doing something about secondary affiliations. So far this seems to have been a problem mainly  for the Highly Cited Researchers indicator in the Shanghai ARWU but it may not be very long before more universities realise  that a few million dollars for adjunct faculty could have a disproportion impact on publication and citation counts.

• Also, perhaps THE should consider excluding self-citations (or even citations within the same institution although that would obviously be technically difficult). Self-citation caused a problem in 2010 when Dr El Naschie's diligent citation of himself and a few friends lifted Alexandria University to fourth place in the world for research impact. Something similar might happen again now that THE are using a larger and less selective database.

The Richest University in China ...

   ...   is Tsinghua University but Zhejiang, Peking and Shanghai Jiao Tong Universities appear to be more productive, as measured by the Publications indicator in the Shanghai rankings.

China Daily has just published a list of the top ten universities in China ranked according to annual income as reported to the Ministry of Education. Here they are with the Publications score (papers in the Science Citation Index and the Social Science Citation Index in 2014) in brackets.


1.     Tsinghua University 17.56 billion yuan (63.8)
2.     Zhejiang University 15.64 billion yuan  (68.5)
3.     Peking University 12.85 billion yuan      (64)
4.     Shanghai Jiao Tong University 11.89 billion yuan   (68.5)
5.     Fudan University 7.71 billion yuan (56.1)
6.     Wuhan University 6.83 billion yuan (45.8)
7.     Jilin University 6.82 billion yuan  (50.7)
8.     Huazhong University of Science and Technology 6.81 billion yuan  (53.1)
9.     Sun Yat-sen University 6.69 billion yuan (54.9)
10.   Sichuan University 6.58 billion yuan    (54.2).

Not fair to call papers freaky

A comment by Pavel Krokovny of Heidelberg University about THE's proposal to exclude papers with 1,000+ authors from their citations indicator in the World University Rankings.

"It is true that all 3k+ authors do not draft the paper together, on the contrary, only a small part of them are involved in this very final step of a giant research work leading to a sound result. It is as well true that making the research performed public and disseminating the knowledge obtained is a crucial step of the whole project. 
But what you probably missed is that this key stage would not be possible at all without a unique setup which was built and operated by profoundly more physicists and engineers than those who processed raw data and wrote a paper. Without that "hidden part of the iceberg" there would be no results at all. And it would be completely wrong to assume that the authors who did the data analysis and wrote the paper should be given the highest credit in the paper. It is very specific for the experimental HEP field that has gone far beyond the situation that was common still in the first half of 20th century when one scientist or a small group of them might produce some interesting results. The "insignificant" right tail in your distribution of papers on number of coauthors contains the hot part of the modern physics with high impact results topped by the discovery of Higgs-boson. And in your next rankings you are going to dishonour those universities that contributed to this discovery."

and

"the point is that frequent fluctuations of the ranking methodology might damage the credibility of the THE. Certainly, I do not imply here large and well-esteemed universities like Harvard or MIT. I believe their high rankings positions not to be affected by nearly any reasonable changes in the methodology. However, the highest attention to the rankings is attracted from numerous ordinary institutions across the world and their potential applicants and employees. In my opinion, these are the most concerned customers of the THE product. As I already pointed out above, it's very questionable whether participation in large HEP experiments (or genome studies) should be considered "unfair" for those institutions."

Changes in Ranking Methodology

This year and next the international university rankings appear to be set for more volatility with unusually large upward and downward movement, partly as a result of changes to the methodology for counting citations in the QS and THE rankings.

ARWU

The global ranking season kicked off last week with the publication of the latest edition of the Academic Ranking of World Universities from the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy (SRC), which I hope to discuss in detail in a little while. These rankings are rather dull and boring, which is exactly what they should be. Harvard is, as always, number one for all but one of the indicators. Oxford has slipped from joint ninth to tenth place. Warwick has leaped into the top 100 by virtue of a Fields medal. At the foot of the table there are new contenders from France, Korea and Iran.

Since they began in 2003 the Shanghai rankings have been characterised by a  generally stable methodology. In 2012, however, they had to deal with the recruitment of a large and unprecedented number of adjunct faculty by King Abdulaziz University. Previously SRC had simply divided the credit for the Highly Cited Researchers indicator equally between all institutions listed as affiliations. In 2012 and 2013 they wrote to all highly cited researchers with joint affiliations and thus determined the division of credit between primary and secondary affiliations. Then, in 2014 and this year they combined the old Thomson Reuters list, first issued in 2001, and the new one, issued in 2014, and excluded all secondary affiliations in the new list.

The result was that in 2014 the rankings showed an unusual degree of volatility although this year things are a lot more stable. My understanding is that Shanghai will move to counting only the new list next year, again without secondary affiliations, so there should be a lot of interesting changes then. It looks as though Stanford, Princeton, University of Wisconsin -- Madison, and Kyoto University will suffer because of the change while University of California Santa Cruz, Rice University, University of Exeter and University of Wollongong. will benefit.

While SRC has efficiently dealt with the issue of secondary affiliation with regard to its Highly Cited indicator, the issue has now resurfaced in the unusual high scores achieved  by King Abdulaziz University for publications largely because of its adjunct faculty. Expect more discussion over the next year or so. It would seem sensible for SRC to think about a five or ten year period rather than one year for their Publications indicator and academic publishers, the media and rankers in general may need to give some thought to the proliferation of secondary affiliations.


QS

On July 27 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) announced that for 18 months they had been thinking about normalising the counting of citations across five broad subject areas. They observed that a typical institution would receive about half of its citations from the life sciences and medicine, over a quarter from the natural sciences but just 1% from the arts and humanities.

In their forthcoming rankings QS will assign a 20% weighting for citations to each of the five subject areas something, according to Ben Sowter Research Director at QS, that they have been doing for the academic opinion survey.

It would seem then that there are likely to be some big rises and big falls this September. I would guess that places strong in humanities, social sciences and engineering like LSE, New York University and Nanyang Technological University may go up and some of the large US state universities and Russian institutions may go down. That's a guess because it is difficult to tell what happens with the academic and employer surveys.

QS have also made an attempt to deal with the issue of hugely cited papers with hundreds, even thousands of "authors" -- contributors would be a better term -- mainly in physics, medicine and genetics. Their approach is to exclude all papers with more than 10 contributing institutions, that is 0.34% of all publications in the database.

This is rather disappointing. Papers with huge numbers of authors and citations obviously do have distorting effects but they have often dealt with fundamental and important issues. To exclude them altogether is to ignore a very significant body of research.

The obvious solution to the problem of multi-contributor papers is fractional counting, dividing the number of citations by the number of contributors or contributing institutions. QS claim that to do so would discourage collaboration, which does not sound very plausible.

In addition, QS will likely extend the life of  survey responses from three to five years. That could make the rankings more stable by smoothing out annual fluctuations in survey responses and reduce the volatility caused by the proposed changes in the counting of citations.

The shift to a moderate version of field normalisation is helpful as it will reduce the undue privilege given to medical research, without falling into the huge problems that result from using too many categories. It is unfortunate, however, that QS have not taken the plunge into fractional counting. One suspects that technical problems and financial considerations might be as significant as the altruistic desire not to discourage collaboration.

After a resorting in September the QS rankings are likely to become a bit more stable and and credible but their most serious problem, the structure, validity and excessive weighting of the academic survey, has still not been addressed.

THE

Meanwhile, Times Higher Education (THE) has also been grappling with the issue of authorship inflation. Phil Baty has announced that this year 649 papers with over 1,000 authors will be excluded from their calculation of citations because " we consider them to be so freakish that they have the potential to distort the global scientific landscape".

But it is not the papers that do the distorting. It is  methodology.  THE and their former data partners Thomson Reuters, like QS, have avoided  fractional counting (except for a small experimental African ranking) and so every one of those hundreds or thousands of authors gets full credit for the hundreds  or thousands of citations. This has given places like Tokyo Metropolitan University, Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa, Universite Cadi Ayyad in Morocco and Bogazici University in Turkey remarkably high scores  for Citations: Research Impact, much higher than their scores for the bundled research indicators.

THE have decided to simply exclude 649 papers, 0r 0.006% of the total from their calculations for the world rankings. This seems a lot less than QS. Again, this is a rather crude measure. Many of the "freaks" are major contributions to advanced research and deserve to be acknowledged by the rankings in some way. 

THE did use fractional counting in their recent experimental ranking of African universities and Baty indicates that they are considering doing so in the future.

It would be a big step forward for THE if they introduce fractional counting of citations. But they should not stop there. There are other bugs in the citations indicator that ought to be fixed.

First, it does not at present measure what it is supposed to measure. It does not measure a university's overall research impact. At best, it is a measure of the average quality of research papers no matter how few (above a certain threshold) they are.

Second, the "regional modification", which divides the university citation impact score by the square root of the the score of the country where the university is located, is another source  of distortion. It gives a bonus to universities simply for being located in  underperforming countries. THE or TR have justified the modification by suggesting that some universities deserve compensation because they lack funding or networking opportunities. Perhaps they do, but this can still lead to serious anomalies.

Thirdly, THE need to consider whether they should assign citations to so many fields since this increases the distortions that can arise when there is a highly cited paper in a normally lowly cited field.

Fourthly, should they assign a thirty per cent weighting to an indicator that may be useful for distinguishing between the likes of MIT and Caltech but may be of little relevance for the universities that are now signing up for the world rankings?

Research Ranking of African Universities

I suppose it should no longer be surprising that university heads flock to Johannesburg for the unveiling of an "experimental" research ranking of 30 African universities that put the University of Port Harcourt in 6th place, did not include Cairo University, the University of Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello University or the University of Nigeria Nsukka, placed Makerere above Stellenbosch and Universite Cadi Ayyad above the University of Pretoria.

It is still a bit odd that African universities seem to have  ignored a reasonable and sensible research ranking from the Journals Consortium that I found while reading an article by Gerald Ouma in the Mail and Guardian Africa, which, by the way, had an advertisement about Universite Cadi Ayyad being number ten in the THE African ranking.

The Journals Consortium ranking is based on publications, citations and web visibility and altogether 1,447 institutions are ranked. The methodology, which is a bit thin, is here.

Here are the top ten.
1.   University of Cape Town
2.   Cairo University
3.   University of Pretoria
4.   University of Nairobi
5.   University of South Africa
6.   University of the Witwatersrand
7.   Stellenbosch University
8.   University of Ibadan
9.   University of Kwazulu-Natal
10. Ain Shams University

The University of Port Harcourt is 36th and Universite Cadi Ayyad is 89th.

I am pleased to note that two of my former employers are in the rankings, University of Maiduguri in 66th place and Umar ibn Ibrahim El-Kanemi College of Education, Science and Technology (formerly Borno College of Basic Studies) in 988th.

This is also really frightening

From The Times, which is supposed to be a really posh paper -- I remember adverts "Top People Read the Times" -- read by people with degrees from Russell Group universities:

"Of the 3 million Muslims in Britain, about 2.3 million identify as Sunni, compared with 300,000 Shias, or 5 per cent of the total. Most British Shias have roots in Iran, Iraq, Azer­baijan or ­Bahrain. Sunnis make up the vast majority of Muslims worldwide."

This is really frightening

The evidence that human intelligence is falling continues to accumulate. PISA scores in Sweden are down and not just among immigrants. The intelligence of US marines, as measured by the General Classification Test, has been in decline since the 1980s. Based on "a small, probably representative sample" the French national IQ has dropped since 1999.

And now we have this from an article about the possible revival of the Liberal Democrats by Jon Stone, who is a reporter, in the Independent, which is a newspaper.

"Lazarus is a character in the Christian holy book The Bible who comes back from the dead after an intervention by Jesus Christ, a religious figure."

I thought the Independent was one of the posh papers read by bright people who had degrees and knew how ignorant and illiterate UKIP supporters were.

Does Jon Stone really think he has to explain to his readers what the Bible is? Or is this some sort of PC policy?

The worse thing is that he apparently doesn't know that Lazarus was really a character in a Robert Heinlein novel.

The Plague of Authorship Inflation

An article in the Wall Street Journal by Robert Lee Hotz describes the apparently inexorable increase in the number of authors of scientific papers.

In 2014 according to the Web of Science the number of papers with 50 or more authors reached over 1400 and the number with 500 or more was over 200. The situation is getting so bad that one journal, Nature, was unable to list all the autors of a paper in the print edition .

Hotz has an amusing digression where he recounts how scientists have listed a hamster, a dog and a computer as co-authors

One issue that he does not explore is the way in which multi-authorship has distorted global university rankings. Times Higher Education and Thomson Reuters until this year declined to use fractional counting of citations in their World University Rankings so that every one of hundreds of contributors was credited with every one of thousands of citations. When this was combined with normalisation by 250 fields so that a few citations could have a disproportionate effect and a deceptive regional modification that rewarded universities for being in a country that produced few citations then the results could be ludicrous. Unproductive institutions, for example Alexandria University, those that are very small,  for example Scuala Normale Superiore Pisa, or very specialised, for example Moscow State Engineering Physics Institute, have been presented by THE as world leaders for research  impact.

Let us hope that this indicator is reformed in the forthcoming world rankings.

Another Ranking Indicator for Africa

The prestigious and exclusive THE African summit is over. Whether it will lead to a serious regional ranking remains to be seen. The indicators used by THE in their world rankings and various regional spin-offs seem generally inappropriate to all but about two dozen institutions: reputation for research, income in three different indicators, citations, number of doctoral students.

But there is still a need to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of African universities in providing instruction in academic, technical and professional subjects and perhaps in their participation in innovative and economically beneficial projects.

Probably the way ahead for African ranking is the use of social media, bypassing the very problematical collection of institutional data.  More of that later.

Anyway, here is a ranking of African universities according to the number of results from a search of the WIPO Patentscope site. Searching was done on the 5th and 6th of August. Universities included the top 50 African universities in Webometrics and any university in the recent THE pilot ranking. All fields were searched.

There are no real surprises. South Africa is dominant, followed by Egypt. The flagships of Uganda, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria are represented. Most universities in Africa do no innovative research reflected in patents.

Rank	University	Country	References in patents any field
1	University of Cape Town	South Africa	377
2	University of Pretoria	South Africa	242
3	University of the Witwatersrand	South Africa	217
4	Stellenbosch University	South Africa	165
5	North West University	South Africa	125
6	Cairo University	Egypt	100
7	University of the Free State	South Africa	72
8	University of Johannesburg	South Africa	46
9	University of Kwazulu-Natal	South Africa	41
10	Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University	South Africa	34
11	Assiut University	Egypt	31
12	Rhodes University	South Africa	30
13	University of Nairobi	Kenya	21
14	Makerere University	Uganda	20
15	University of the Western Cape	South Africa	18
16	American University in  Cairo	Egypt	17
17	University of Ghana	Ghana	13
18	Université Mohammed V Souissi	Morocco	12
19	Cape Peninsula University of Technology	South Africa	11
20	Mansoura University	Egypt	10
21	University of Namibia	Namibia	9
22	Alexandria University	Egypt	8
23	University of Ibadan	Nigeria	7
24=	Kenyatta University	Kenya	6
24=	University of Zimbabwe	Zimbabwe	6
24=	Durban University of Technology	South Africa	6
27=	University of South Africa	South Africa	5
27=	Zagazig University	Egypt	5
27=	Suez Canal University	Egypt	5
30=	University of Dar Es Salaam	Tanzania	4
30=	Addis Ababa University	Ethiopia	4
32=	University of Ilorin	Nigeria	3
32=	University of Khartoum	Sudan	3
32=	University of Malawi	Malawi	3
35=	Helwan University	Egypt	2
35=	Université Hassan II Ain Chock	Morocco	2
35=	Université Cadi Ayyad Marrake	Morocco	2
35=	Kafrelsheikh University	Egypt	2
35=	University of Zambia	Zambia	2
35=	Ahmadu Bello University	Nigeria	2
41=	University of Lagos	Nigeria	1
41=	Université Cheikh Anta Diop	Senegal	1
41=	University of Mauritius	Mauritius	1
41=	Université de Constantine 1	Algeria	1
41=	Université  de Yaounde 1	Cameroons	1
46=	Obafemi Awolowo University	Nigeria	0
46=	Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology	Ghana	0
46=	University of Port Harcourt	Nigeria	0
46=	University of Botswana	Botswana	0
46=	Tanta University	Egypt	0
46=	Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology	Ghana	0
46=	University of Port Harcourt	Nigeria	0
46=	Covenant University	Nigeria	0
46=	Bejaia university	Algeria	0
46=	University of Botswana	Botswana	0
46=	Minia University	Egypt	0
46=	University of Tunis	Tunisia	0
46=	Benha University	Algeria	0
46=	Universidade Católica de Angola	Angola	0
46=	Université de Lomé	Togo	0
46=	South Valley University	Egypt	0
46=	Université Abou Bekr Belkaid	Algeria	0
46=	Beni-Suef university	Egypt	0
46=	Université Omar Bongo	Gabon	0
46=	University of The Gambia	Gambia	0
46=	Université de Toliara	Madagascar	0
46=	Université Kasdi Merbah Ouargia	Algeria	0
46=	Universite de la Reunion	Reunion	0
46=	Universidade Eduardo Mondlane	Mozambique	0
46=	Université de Ouagadougou	Burkina Faso	0
46=	University of Rwanda	Rwanda	0
46=	Universite de Bamako	Mali	0
46=	University of Swaziland	Swaziland	0
46=	Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny	Ivory Coast	0
46=	Université de Kinshasa	Democratic republic of the Congo	0
46=	National University of Lesotho	Lesotho	0
46=	Universidade Jean Piaget de Cabo Verde	Cape Verde	0
46=	National Engineering School of Sfax	Tunisia	0
46=	Université Marien Ngouabi	Congo republic	0
46=	University of Liberia	Liberia	0
46=	Université Djillali Liabes	Algeria	0
46=	Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey	Niger	0
46=	Misurata University	Egypt	0
46=	Université de Dschang	Cameroons	0
46=	Université de Bangui	Central African Republic	0
46=	Université de Nouakchott	Mauretania	0
46=	Eritrea Iinstitute of Technology	Eritrea	0
46=	Université de Djibouti	Djibout	0
46=	University of Seychelles	Seychelles	0
46=	Mogadishu University	Somalia	0
46=	Universidad Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial	Equatorial Guinea	0
46=	Universite Gamal Abdel Nasser de Conakry	Guinea	0
46=	University of Makeni	Sierria Leone	0
46=	John Garang Memorial University	South Sudan	0
46=	Hope African University	Burundi	0
46=	Universite de Moundou	Chad	0

The Onion Analyses the US News Rankings

Just an extract. The whole thing is here.

• Step 1: Schools are weighed on a scale
• Step 2: Researchers calculate each campus’ student-to-student ratio
• Step 3: Any college whose colors are maroon and gold is immediately eliminated

Error announcement from CWTS Leiden Ranking

See here for an error announcement from CWTS Leiden Ranking.

The prompt disclosure of the error adds to the credibility of the rankings.

Japan Targets the THE Rankings

The Wall Street Journal has an article about the proposed transformation of Japanese higher education. The national government is apparently using financial pressure to persuade universities to either become world class or local industry-orientated institutions.

World class means being in the top 100 of the THE world university rankings. Japan wants to have ten there. Now it only has two.

It is not a good idea to focus on just one ranking. If the Japanese government insists on aiming at just one then  THE might not be the best bet. The Shanghai rankings are more stable, reliable and transparent. In addition, it seems that the THE rankings are biased against Japan.

Degree Class is no Longer Important

The relentless grade inflation in British secondary and tertiary education has been well documented. A first or upper second class degree or a grade A at A level no longer means very much. It has  been far too easy for universities to cover up their deficiencies or attract applications by handing out firsts or upper seconds like smarties.

Now the consequences are beginning to become apparent. Ernst and Young (EY), the accounting firm, will no longer require applicants to have an upper second or three grade Bs. Instead they will use "numerical tests" and "strength assessments" to assess applicants.

I suspect that in a little while EY will come under fire for not recruiting enough of those groups that do not test well, especially in quantitative skills. They and others will probably join in the hunt for the Holy Grail of modern social science, the factor that is non-cognitive but still significantly predictive of career success.

Meanwhile, universities will try to find new functions to replace their historical role as the guarantor of a certain level of cognitive ability. Expect to see more conversations about assessing civic engagement or reaching out to communities.

The CWUR Rankings 2015

The Center for World University Rankings, based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has produced the latest edition of its global ranking of 1,000 universities.  The Center is headed by Nadim Mahassen, an Assistant Professor at King Abdulaziz University.

The rankings include five indicators that measure various aspects of publication and research: publications in "reputable journals", research papers in "highly influential" journals, citations, h-index and patents.

These indicators are given a combined weighting of 25%.

Another 25% goes to Quality of Education, which is measured by the number of alumni receiving major international awards relative to size (current number of students according to national agencies). This is obviously a  crude measure which fails to distinguish among the great mass of universities that have never won an award.

Similarly, another quarter is assigned to Quality of Faculty measured by the number of faculty receiving such awards and another quarter to Alumni Employment measured by the number of CEOs of top corporations. Again, these indicators are of little or no relevance to all but a few hundred institutions.

Alumni employment gets another 25%. This is measured by alumni holding CEO positions in top companies. Again, this would be of relevance to a limited number of universities.

The Top Ten are:

1.    Harvard

2.    Stanford

3.    MIT

4.    Cambridge

5.    Oxford

6.    Columbia

7.    Berkeley

8.    Chicago

9.    Princeton

10.  Cornell.

The only change from last year is that Cornell has replaced Yale in tenth place.


Countries with Universities in the Top Hundred in 2015 and 2014

Country	Universities in  top 100 2015	2014
US	55	53
UK	7	7
Japan	7	8
Switzerland	4	4
France	4	4
Canada	3	3
Israel	3	3
South Korea	2	1
Germany	2	4
Australia	2	2
China	2	2
Netherlands	2	1
Russia	1	1
Taiwan	1	1
Belgium	1	1
Norway	1	0
Sweden	1	2
Singapore	1	1
Denmark	1	1

Italy

0

1

Top Ranked in Region or Country

USA:                                       Harvard
Canada:                                  Toronto
Asia:                                       Tokyo
South Asia:                             IIT Delhi
Southeast Asia :                      National University of Singapore
Europe:                                   Cambridge
Central and Eastern Europe:    Lomonosov Moscow State University
Arab World:                             King Saud University
Middle East:                             Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Latin America:                         Sao Paulo
Africa:                                      University of the Witwatersrand

Carribbean:                              University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez



Noise Index


In the top 20, the CWUR rankings are more stable than THE and QS but less stable than the Shanghai rankings.

Average position change of universities in the top 20 in 2014: 0.5

Comparison

CWUR 2013-14:            0.9
Shanghai Rankings (ARWU)
2011-12:                        0.15
2012-13:                        0.25
THE WUR  2012-13:      1.2
QS  WUR    2012-13      1.7

With regard to the top 100, the CWUR rankings are more stable this year, with a volatility similar to the QS and THE rankings although significantly less so than ARWU.



Average position change of universities in the top 100 in 2014: 4.15

Comparison

CWUR 2013-14:           10.59

Shanghai Rankings (ARWU
2011-12:                           2.01
2012-13:                           1.66
THE WUR  2012-13:         5.36
QS  WUR    2012-13:    -   3.97

The Other THE African University Rankings

THE have just presented Africa and the world with a list of 30 African universities ranked according to "research impact", that is the number of citations per paper normalised by field (300 of them?) and year. Citations are not just counted but compared with the world average for specific years and fields.

The result is that a university that manages to join a large international project, typically in medicine, genetics or particle physics with a disproportionate number of citations especially in the first couple of years of publication, can get an extremely high score. If the university had few publications to begin with the score for this indicator would be even higher.

For these rankings THE have introduced fractionalised counting. so that a university that is one of 100 contributors to a project with 2000 citations would get the equivalent of 20 citations. Under the procedure THE and the their former data collectors Thomson Reuters had been using for the world university rankings it would have been credited with 2000 citations as would all the other contributors.

THE are to be congratulated for finally using fractionalised counting which has reduced the likelihood of the indicator producing very odd results. Even so, the snapshot ranking is inappropriate for African universities, as it still privileges those that happen to contribute to to a few international projects.

The results might seem acceptable to THE and its international audiencebut I suspect that Egyptian academics will be amused by a ranking that includes six universities but not Cairo University . I wonder how many Nigerians will accept a ranking that includes Port Harcourt but not Ibadan or Ahmadu Bello.

Along with standardised scores for citations THE has also included the number of publications in the Scopus database between 2009 and 2013. This, a measurement of research output of a fairly high quality, is probably more relevant to Africa than the citations indicator. Unfortunately, it shows the very limited amount of research done between the Sahara and the Kalahari and so would be inexpedient to present as a snapshot of what a future ranking might look like.

The methods, approaches and assumptions of THE's world rankings with their emphasis on inputs, especially income, research quality, inappropriately called research impact or research influence, reputation, and doctoral education are of limited value to all but a few African universities and stakeholders. Whether anything of value comes from the conversation in Johannesburg remains to be seen but it is unlikely that a modified version of the world rankings will be of much value to anyone.

Anyway, below are the 30 African universities reordered according to number of publications.

Rank	University	Country	number of  publications 2009-2013
1	University of Cape Town	South Africa	5540.21
2	University of Pretoria	South Africa	4544.33
3	University of the Witwatersrand	South Africa	4387.17
4	Stellenbosch University	South Africa	4357.33
5	University of Kwazulu-Natal	South Africa	4235.09
6	Alexandria University	Egypt	2550.15
7	Universite de Sfax	Tunisia	2355.30
8	University of Johannesburg	South Africa	2192.74
9	North West University	South Africa	1707.94
10	Assiut University	Egypt	1588.64
11	University of the Free State	South Africa	1512.56
12	Université Mohammed V – Agdal	Morocco	1503.69
13	Rhodes University	South Africa	1296.96
14	University of the Western Cape	South Africa	1154.77
15	Makerere University	Uganda	1112.69
16	Suez Canal University	Egypt	998.98
17	University of South Africa	South Africa	981.67
18	Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University	South Africa	885.77
19	Universite Hassan II Casablanca	Morocco	960.25
20	Universite Cadi Ayyad	Morocco	910.82
21	Addis Ababa University	Ethiopia	893.90
22	Univerite de Tunis	Tunisia	879.63
23	Universite de Yaounde I	Cameroons	876.33
24	Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Sfax	Tunisia	822.31
25	University of Ghana	Ghana	804.53
26	American University in Cairo	Egypt	700.89
27	Minia University	Egypt	694.79
28	University of Nairobi	Kenya	671.72
29	South Valley University	Egypt	636.85
30	University of Port Harcourt	Nigeria	573.55

Google Scholar Ranking of African Universities

As competition in the ranking world intensifies, Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds are  diligently promoting their various regional ranking, data processing and event management projects. The latest is THE's African summit at the University of Johannesburg.

Three weeks ago THE issued what they described as an "experimental and preliminary" ranking which consisted of 15 universities ordered according to the number of citations per paper normalised for field and year. An interesting innovation was that citations were fractionalised so that participants in large collaborative projects would be credited in proportion to their fraction of the total contributors .

This is just one indicator and it is not really a measure of research influence, but rather of research quality and it is still skewed by participation in multi-contributor papers in medicine and particle physics. It is unlikely that the University of Port Harcourt or Universite Cadi Ayyad would  be in the top ten of any other indicator.

THE have indicated that they will add another 15 names to the list at the Johannesburg summit.

The table below was compiled for the purpose of checking on the claims of THE or other rankers that might attempt to evaluate African universities. It simply counts the number of results (2012-2014: exclude citations and patents) from a query to Google Scholar. Data was compiled on the 25th and 26th of July. The criteria for inclusion were being in the top 50 of the Webometrics rankings or the 15 universities in the THE list. The top university in any country not included was added from either the Webometrics or ic4u rankings.

This database includes papers, reports, theses and dissertations, conference proceedings and so on. It is certainly not a measure of research quality but rather of the volume of any activities connected with research.  In the case of the two Kenyan universities it probably reflects the size and inclusiveness of the university repositories.

One thing about the Google scholar list is that it confirms suspicions that the quality of Egyptian universities has been underestimated by the big name rankers. For further evidence one might look at data from social media such as LinkedIn or just contrast the aspirations of Egyptian students in the revolutions of 2011 and 2013 compared with those of students at the University of Cape Town and Durban University of Technology.

Rank	University	Country	Google Scholar  Results
1	University of Cape Town	South Africa	17,000
2	Cairo University	Egypt	16,800
3	University of Pretoria	South Africa	16,500
4	University of Nairobi	Kenya	16,400
5	University of the Witwatersrand	South Africa	15,800
6	University of Kwazulu-Natal	South Africa	15,500
7	Stellenbosch University	South Africa	14,900
8	University of Ibadan	Nigeria	14,800
9	University of South Africa	South Africa	13,500
10	Kenyatta University	Kenya	12,000
11	University of Johannesburg	South Africa	11,200
12	Makerere University	Uganda	10,400
13	North West University	South Africa	10,100
14	University of Ghana	Ghana	8,330
15	Alexandria University	Egypt	7,610
16	University of Lagos	Nigeria	7,220
17	Rhodes University	South Africa	7,210
18	University of the Western Cape	South Africa	6,870
19	Obafemi Awolowo University	Nigeria	6,800
20	Mansoura University	Egypt	6,480
21	University of the Free State	South Africa	6,400
22	Addis Ababa University	Ethiopia	6,210
23	Zagazig University	Egypt	6,160
24	American University in Cairo	Egypt	5,770
25	University of Ilorin	Nigeria	5,620
26	Assiut University	Egypt	5,580
27	Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology	Ghana	5,080
28=	University of Zimbabwe	Zimbabwe	4,830
28=	University of Port Harcourt	Nigeria	4,830
30	University of Botswana	Botswana	4,260
31	University of Zambia	Zambia	4,240
32	University of Dar Es Salaam	Tanzania	4,120
33	University of Khartoum	Sudan	4,110
34	Suez Canal University	Egypt	3,670
35	Tanta University	Egypt	3,600
36	Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology	Kenya	3,520
37	Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University	South Africa	3,490
38	Covenant University Ota	Nigeria	2,950
39	Helwan University	Egypt	2,940
40	Benha University	Egypt	2,570
41	Minia University	Egypt	2,390
42	University of Malawi	Malawi	2,340
43	Université Abou Bekr Belkaid	Algeria	2,290
44	Universityof Tunis	Tunisia	2,270
45=	Université Kasdi Merbah Ouargla	Algeria	2,240
45=	Cape Peninsula University of Technology	South Africa	2,240
47	Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar	Senegal	1,950
48	University of Namibia	Namibia	1,760
49	Universite de la Reunion	Reunion	1,690
50	Durban University of Technology	South Africa	1,560
51	University of Mauritius	Mauritius	1,490
52	Université d'Abomey-Calavi	Benin	1,460
53	South Valley University	Egypt	1,440
54	Universidade Eduardo Mondlane	Mozambique	1,420
55	Beni-Suef University	Egypt	1,400
56	Université Cadi Ayyad Marrakech	Morroco	1,370
57	Université de Ouagadougou	Burkina Faso	1,300
58	University of Rwanda	Rwanda	1,270
59	Université des Sciences et de la Technologie Houari Boumediene	Algeria	976
60	Université de Lomé	Togo	784
61	Université de Bamako	Mali	660
62	Kafrelsheikh University	Egypt	618
63	University of Swaziland	Swaziland	615
64	Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny	Ivory Coast	590
65	Université de Kinshasa	Domocratic Republic of the Congo	558
66	National University of Lesotho	Lesotho	555
67	Université Constantine 1	Algeria	468
68	Bejaia University	Algeria	413
69	Universidade Jean Piaget de Cabo Verde	Cape Verde	407
70	Université Mohammed V Souissi	Tunisia	361
71	National Engineering School of Sfax	Tunisia	271
72	Université Marien Ngouabi	Republc of Congo	256
73	University of Liberia	Liberia	255
74	Université Djillali Liabes	Algeria	243
75	Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey	Niger	206
76	Misurata University	Libya	155
77	Université Omar Bongo	Gabon	138
78	University of The Gambia	Gambia	130
79	Universidade Católica de Angola	Angola	115
80=	Université de Dschang	Cameroons	113
80=	Université de Bangui	Central African Empire	113
82	Université de Nouakchott	Mauretania	108
83	Eritrea Institute of Technology	Eritrea	76
84	Université de Djibouti	Djibouti	66
85	Université de Toliara	Madagascar	59
86	Université Hassan II Ain Chock	Morocco	55
87	University of Seychelles	Seychelles	52
88	Mogadishu University	Somalia	51
89	Universidad Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial	Equatorial Guinea	40
90	Universite Gamal Abdel Nasser de Conakry	Guinea	21
91	University of Makeni	Sierra Leone	18
92	John Garang Memorial University	South Sudan	12
93	Hope Africa University	Burundi	3
94	Universite de Moundou	Chad	2

Would anyone notice if a small, old but awfully clever dog filled in a university ranking survey, and would it make a difference?

The Australian newspaper The Age has a piece by Erica Cervini on how she allowed her dog to complete the QS academic reputation survey on the quality of veterinary schools.

She doesn't elaborate on how the dog chose the schools. Was it by barking or tail wagging when shown pictures of the buildings?

Seriously though, she does have a point. Can QS stop people signing up just to support their employer or outvote their rivals?

To be fair, QS are aware that their surveys might be manipulated and have taken steps over the years to prevent this by such means as forbidding respondents from voting for their declared employer or repeat voting from the same computer. Even so, it seems that some universities, especially in Latin America, are getting scores in the reputation surveys that appear too high,especially when compared with their overall scores. In the employer survey the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile is 56th (overall 167) and the University of Buenos Aires 49th (overall 198). In the academic survey the University of Sao Paulo is 54th (overall 132 and the National Autonomous University of Mexico 55th (overall 175).

QS are apparently considering reforming their citations per faculty indicator and allowing unchanged responses to the surveys to be recycled for five instead of three years. This is welcome but a more rigorous overhaul of the reputation indicators is sorely needed.

Perfect Storm Heading for Tokyo Metropolitan University

Seen on the Times Higher Education website today:

Tokyo Metropolitan University

World's Best University

Scored a Perfect 100.00 for Two Years in Citations Sector

From TMU to the World

Tokyo Metropolitan University got its perfect score largely because it was one of hundreds of institutions contributing to a few publications from the Large Hadron Collider project. In their recent experimental African rankings THE started using fractionalized counting of citations. If THE use this method in the coming world rankings then TMU will surely suffer a dramatic fall in the citations indicator.

I would not like to be the president of TMU on September 30th.

Recommended Reading

Anybody interested in educational policy, especially the never ending campaign to close gaps of one sort or another or the oddities of university rankings should take a look at chapter four of Jordan Ellenberg's How not to be wrong: The  power of mathematical thinking which is about the obvious -- or ought to be obvious observation -- that smaller populations are more variable.

He notes that South Dakota is top of the league for brain cancer while North Dakota is near the bottom. What makes the difference? It is just that the bigger the population the more likely it is that outliers will be diluted by a great mass of mediocrity. So, extreme scores tend to crop up in small places or small samples.

Similarly when he tossed coins ten at a time he came up head counts ranging from 3 to 9 out of ten.

When he tossed them 100 at a time he got counts ranging from 45 to 60.

When he (actually his computer program) tossed them 1,000 times, the counts ranged from 462 to 537.

It is worth remembering this when a study with a double digit sample is published showing the latest way to close one of achievement gaps or a very small school in a rural state somewhere starts boosting the test scores of underperforming students or a few test takers reveal that the national IQ is imploding. Or the studies fail to be replicated, if indeed anyone tries.

Or university rankings that show very small or very unproductive institutions having an enormous research impact measured by citations.

In the QS BRICS rankings nearly everybody gets a prize

There is a growing trend towards specialised and regional university rankings. The magic of this is that they can provide something for almost everybody. QS recently published its latest BRICS rankings which combined data from five very different university systems. The result was a triumphant (almost) success for everybody (almost).

Here are some highlights that QS could use in selling the BRICS rankings or an expanded version.

Russian universities are ahead of everybody else for teaching quality.

The top 21 universities in the BRICS for Faculty Student Ratio (perhaps not a perfect proxy for teaching excellence) are Russian, headed by Bauman Moscow State Technical University. Imagine what Russian universities could do if QS recognised the importance of teaching and increased the weighting for this indicator.

India performs excellently for Faculty with a Ph D.

Out of the top 15 for this category, ten are Indian and all of these get the maximum score of 100. Of the other five, four are Brazilian and one Chinese. If only QS realised the importance of a highly qualified faculty, India would do much better in the overall rankings.

South Africa takes five out of the first six places for international faculty.

China has four out of five top places for academic reputation and employer reputation.

Meanwhile a Brazilian university is first for international faculty and another is third for academic reputation.

It seems that with rankings like these a lot depends on the weighting assigned to the various indicators.

Yes, going to the library might be good for you

A study by Felly Chiteng Kot and Jennifer L. Jones has found that

"using a given library resource was associated with a small, but also meaningful, gain in first-term grade point average, net of other factors."

But, correlation does not necessarily mean causation. Could it be that bright people like to go to libraries?

Still, most students are likely to behave better in the library than other places, so let's not quibble too much.

Implications of the THE African Pilot Ranking

The most interesting thing about THE's experimental African ranking is the use of fractionalised counting of citations. This means that the total number of citations is divided by the number of institutions contributing to a publication. Previously, the method used in THE rankings was to assign the total citations of a paper to all of the institutions that contributed just as though each one had been the only contributor. This has produced some very questionable results with universities that were excellent but very specialised or just generally unproductive  scoring remarkably high scores for citations. Panjab university, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa, Federico Santa Maria Technical University and Moscow State Engineering Physics Institute have all had moments of glory in the THE rankings because of  citation scores that were dramatically higher than their scores for research or any other indicator or group of indicators.

The new method, if applied generally, is likely to see a significant reduction in the scores given to such universities. We can estimate what might happen by looking at the four universities that are included in both the African pilot ranking and last year's world rankings,  Cape Town, Witwatersrand, Stellenbosch and Universite Marrakesh Cadi Ayyad, Morocco.

In the world rankings these universities received scores of 86.6, 67.3, 45.6 and 83 respectively. The score of 83 for Universite Cadi Ayyad resulted very largely from its contributions to several publications from the Large Hadron Collider project, one of which has been cited over 2,000 times, a low overall output of papers and the "regional modification" that gave a big boost to low scoring countries. The scores for the three South African universities reflected a larger total output and citations over a broad range of disciplines.

In the African pilot ranking the scores for citations were Cape Town 90.90, Witwatersrand 99.76, Stellenbosch 95.48 and Cadi Ayyad 78.61. The high scores for the South African institutions reflect a much lower mean score than in the world rankings. 

The fall in Cadi Ayyad's citation score from 3.6 points below Cape Town to 21.3 below and its falling behind Stellenbosch and Witwatersrand presumably reflect the impact of fractionalised counting.

This suggests that if fractionalised counting is used in the coming World University Rankings many small or specialised institutions will suffer and there will be a lot of reshuffling.