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Category: Rankings

Bibliometrics III: The Leiden Rankings

One of my favourite bibliometric analysis tools is the criminally-underused (at least in Canada) Leiden Rankings. The nice thing about Leiden – apart from it being global in scope – is its web-based, interactive nature. Users can choose comparators by region or country, whether or not to use non-English-language papers and how to normalize for institutional size. Unlike most rankings (e.g., the Times Higher), it’s the user that’s in control. Most importantly, users choose the indicators for comparisons. One can

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March 29, 2012 1 Comment

Bibliometrics, Part Deux: Database Politics

Back in the 1950s, someone came up with the idea of creating indexes of citations in scientific journals. The Science Citation Index then appeared in 1961, and one for the social sciences followed in 1966. Ever since that time, it has been possible to answer questions like: “who publishes more articles” and “whose articles are being cited more”? With little effort, you can aggregate up from individual academics to departments or institutions, and this data feeds many international rankings systems.

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March 26, 2012 No Comments

The Times Higher Education Research Rankings

There are three types of rankings and ratings out there. The first are the ones published by The Globe and Mail, U.S. News and World Report, and Maclean’s – essentially consumer guides which try to focus on aspects of the undergraduate experience. Then there are very quantitatively-oriented research rankings, from places like Shanghai Jiao Tong, Leiden and HEEACT. And then there are the beauty contests, like the Time Higher Education’s World University Reputation Rankings, which was issued last week. Or rather,

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March 19, 2012 1 Comment

Rankings Indigestion

The easiest knock on rankings like those produced by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, is that they only measure research, and that universities are about much more than just research. That’s absolutely true, of course, but to my mind it also reflects a general unwillingness to come to grips with what an odd, hybrid of an organization higher education really is. Go back two hundred years and universities were nearly irrelevant as institutions. The decline of the church had robbed the

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November 29, 2011 No Comments

More Shanghai Needed

I’m in Shanghai this week, a guest of the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University for their biannual conference. It’s probably the best spot on the international conference circuit to watch how governments and institutions are adapting to a world in which their performance is being measured, compared and ranked on a global scale. In discussions like this the subject of rankings is never far away, all the more so at this meeting because its convenor, Professor

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November 1, 2011 1 Comment

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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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