The Utility of Rankings

Another advantage of a good performance in international university rankings is that graduates will be able to get into Russian postgraduate programs (if your university is in a G8 country).

Russia’s education ministry is currently drawing up a list of foreign universities whose qualifications will be recognized.

The list will include only universities located within the G8 countries that enter the top 300 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities or the QS World University Rankings. Officials say there will be around 300 institutions meeting the criteria.

The reform is intended to attract more students to take part in Russian MA and PhD programs.

Update 5 on El Naschie vs Nature

The BBC has another piece on the Nature case by Pallab Ghosh. It seems that El Naschie is now admitting that his papers were not peer reviewed but argues that this was because he had no peers who could review them:

He said that he would discuss his papers with fellow scientists, and only when he thought that they were of a sufficiently high standard would he publish them. "I am too arrogant and have too much self-respect to allow a bad paper to pass through," he said.

Prof El Naschie called one witness, Prof Otto Rossler - an honorary editor of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals.

He told the court that there was no-one who could peer review him, referring to Prof El Naschie, because "if you have something new to offer, peer review is dangerous", adding that in such cases "peer review delays progress in science".

Prof El-Naschie asked his witness whether he thought that his (Prof El Naschie) papers were of "poor quality".

Prof Rossler replied: "On the contrary, they were very important and will become more important in the future."

And he added: "You are the most hard-working and diligent scientists I have ever met."

It is a useful to compare Rossler with Neil Turok, Nature's expert witness. Rossler is best known lately for warning that the Large Hadron Collider risked creating black holes that would destroy the world. See El Naschie Watch for this and other information. He is also a self-proclaimed simultaneous submitter, something that for journal editors is almost as bad as plagiarism. A comment on Rossler's claims concludes "To conclude: this text would not pass the referee process in a serious journal".

It seems that it is increasingly difficult to argue that Alexandria University's remarkable scores for research impact in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings were the result of outstanding, excellent or even controversial research.

I am not sure what an honorary editor is but at the moment Rossler is not listed as any sort of editor at the official Chaos Solitons and Fractals home page.


Incidentally, since the trial will presumably turn to the question of El Naschie's affiliations at some point, this page lists him as Founding Editor but does not give any affiliation.

The Politics of Ranking

One of the more interesting aspects of the university ranking business is the way it is used by local politicians to advance their agenda. This is especially obvious in Malaysia where errors and methodological changes have sent local universities bouncing up down the QS rankings. Every rise is proclaimed to be a vindication of government policy while every fall is accompanied by head shaking from the opposition.

This year Universiti Malaya moved into the QS top 200. There is nothing surprising about that: it has been there before. More significant was getting into the Shanghai Academic ranking of World Universities top 500. That is a lot harder but also more likely to reflect real underlying changes. It seems that UM has finally realised that a little bit of encouragement and financial support can produce quite significant results in a short period time.

Patrick Lee, in the blog of opposition leader Lee Kit Siang, comments that:  

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia has little to show for its universities despite spending more money on tertiary education than do many other countries.
Malaysian universities lag behind many counterparts in Asia, including those located in neighbouring countries like Thailand and Singapore, according to a World Bank report released today.
“While Malaysia spends slightly more than most countries on its university students, leading Malaysian universities perform relatively poorly in global rankings,” said the report, entitled Malaysia Economic Monitor: Smart Cities.
Citing the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2010, it noted that Universiti Malaya (UM) was ranked 207th worldwide and 29th in Asia.
It also quoted a US News and World 2011 report on the World’s Best Universities, which put UM, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Sains Malaysia and Universiti Putra Malaysia at 167th, 279th, 335th and 358th place respectively.
Even more worrying, the World Bank report observed, was the “increasing gap” between Malaysia’s and Singapore’s universities.
It compared UM with the National University of Singapore (NUS), which QS cited as the leading university in Southeast Asia.
“The gap between UM and NUS has been high and generally increasing, especially in the sciences,” the report said.
According to the report, UM and NUS were on par when it came to science and technology in 2005. However, UM has lost out to NUS over the past six years.
The report also said many of Malaysia’s university graduates did not seem to have the skills that would help them get employment.

Firstly, the QS  and the US News and World Report rankings are the same. Secondly, it is a lot easier to start a university in Malaysia than in Singapore.

Even so, moving into the Shanghai rankings is a real advance and should be recognised as such. 

Update 4 on El Naschie vs Nature

Gervase de Wilde has an article on the case in Inform's Blog. He refers to the Guardian's account and then adds the following comment:

Comment
The case seems to offer ammunition to libel reformers. Even in the absence of the ill-advised and incoherent aspects of his case which were excluded before trial, and of the implicit comparisons of his work to Einstein’s made during the first five days at the High Court, his claim against a venerable and highly respected scientific journal seems a poor substitute for meeting their allegations head on in some form of correspondence or public debate. Moreover, the journal had published the Claimant’s own defence of his methods in running CSF, that he sought to emphasise scientific content above impressive affiliations, in the original article.

A spokesperson for the Libel Reform campaign, speaking to the Guardian, commented that reform can’t come soon enough, since

“Scientists expect publications like Nature to investigate and write about controversies within the scientific community. The threat of libel action is preventing scientific journals from discussing what is good and bad science.”

However, the public interest defence argued for by campaigners is one which is already being employed. The BBC reports that Andrew Caldecott QC’s opening statement for the Defendants described their defence as relying on the article being “true, honest opinion and responsible journalism on an issue of public interest”.

As the choice of witnesses indicates, the case does touch on the seemingly incomprehensible branch of physics in which the Claimant has made his academic career. In this respect there is a threat of a libel action stifling academic debate, and a similarity to BCA v Singh 2010 EWCA Civ 350, where opinions expressed in a controversy on what was essentially a scientific matter were at issue. But it is also about the methods he employed in running a publication in the context of a widely recognised system of accreditation and review, and about allegations regarding the professional affiliations which feature on his website. These are the kind of criticisms that might be made about any professional person, and would not necessarily come under scope of a scientific exception for “rigorous debate” on good and bad science urged by campaigners.

It is questionable whether the phrase "academic career" is appropriate since El Naschie has not apparently held any formal permanent academic posts recently unless one counts the award of an Emeritus Professorship by Alexandria University, a strange distinction since there is no sign of the professorship from which he retired.