Ranking Global Rankings: Information

Another indicator for ranking global rankings might be the amount of information that they contain. Here are 17 global rankings in the IREG Inventory ranked according to the number of indicators or groups of indicators for which scores or ranks are given. The median and the mode are both six.

The number for U-Multirank is perhaps misleading since data is not provided for all universities. 

 Number of indicators or indicator groups with scores or ranks

Rank	Ranking	Address of publisher	Number of indicators
1	U-Multirank	Germany	112
2	RUR Round University Rankings	Russia	20
3	CWTS Leiden Ranking	Netherlands	19
4	US News Best Global Universities	USA	13
5	NTU Ranking	Taiwan	8
6	CWUR University Rankings	UAE	7
7=	QS World University Rankings	UK	6
7=	Shanghai Ranking ARWU	China	6
7=	UI GreenMetric Ranking	Indonesia	6
7=	URAP University Ranking by Academic Performance	Turkey	6
11	THE World University Rankings	UK	5
12	Ranking Web of Universities (Webometrics)	Spain	4
13	SCImago Institutions Ranking	Spain	3
14	Nature Index	UK	2
15=	Emerging/Trendence Global University Employability	France	1
15=	Reuters Top 100 Innovative Universities	USA	1
15=	uniRank University Ranking	Australia	1

Ranking Global Rankings: Inclusion

The number of international global universities continues to grow and it is becoming harder to keep track of them. Earlier this year IREG published an inventory of international rankings that included 17 global rankings. Here are those rankings in order of the number of institutions that they rank in the most recent edition.

Webometrics is the clear winner, followed by uniRank and SCImago. There are, of course, other indicators to think about and some of these will be covered later.

Number of Institutions ranked

Rank	Ranking	Address of publisher	Number ranked
1	Ranking Web of Universities (Webometrics)	Spain	28,077
2	uniRank University Ranking	Australia	13,146
3	SCImago Institutions Ranking	Spain	5,637
4	URAP University Ranking by Academic Performance	Turkey	2,500
5	U-Multirank	Germany	1,500
6	US News Best Global Universities	USA	1,250
7	THE World University Rankings	UK	1,000+
8=	Shanghai Ranking ARWU	China	1,000
8=	CWUR University Rankings	UAE	1,000
10	QS World University Rankings	UK	916
11	CWTS Leiden Ranking	Netherlands	903
12	NTU Ranking	Taiwan	800
13	RUR Round University Rankings	Russia	783
14	UI GreenMetric Ranking	Indonesia	619
15	Nature Index	UK	500
16	Emerging/Trendence Global University Employability	France	150
17	Reuters Top 100 Innovative Universities	USA	100

Ranking US Rankings

Forbes Magazine has an article by Willard Dix that ranks US  ranking sites. The ranking is informal without specifying indicators but the author does give us an idea of what he thinks a good ranking should do.

Here are the top five of thirteen:
1.  US News: America's Best Colleges
2.  Money magazine: Best Colleges Ranking
3.  Forbes: America's Top Colleges
4.  Kiplinger's Best College Values
5.  Washington Monthly: College Guide and Rankings.

Reading through the comments it is possible to get an idea of the criteria of a good ranking. Rankings should contain a lot of information, they should be comprehensive and include a large number of institutions, they should provide data that helps prospective students and stakeholders, they should be published for several years, if they use surveys they should have a lot of respondents, they should have face validity (a list with a "revolutionary algorithm" that puts non-Ivy places at the top is in 13th place).