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Academic Ranking of World Academic Ranking of World

UniversitiesUniversities

Methodologies and ProblemsMethodologies and Problems

May 15, 2007May 15, 2007

By Professor Nian Cai LiuBy Professor Nian Cai LiuInstitute of Higher Education and Center for World-Class UniversitiesInstitute of Higher Education and Center for World-Class Universities

Shanghai Jiao Tong University, ChinaShanghai Jiao Tong University, China

Colloque de l’Académie des sciences "Évolution des publications scientifiques - Le regard des chercColloque de l’Académie des sciences "Évolution des publications scientifiques - Le regard des chercheurs" des 14-15 mai 2007heurs" des 14-15 mai 2007

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Outline

Purposes

Methodologies &

Results

Problems & Discussion

Ranking by Subject

Fields

Final Remarks

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Purposes

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Dream of Chinese for WCU

World-class university (WCU) is a dream

for generations of Chinese. It’s not only

for pride, but also for the future of

China.

Recently, Chinese government has

launched several initiatives for research

universities. The best-known one is

specially designed to build WCU (985

Project).

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Goals of Top Chinese Universities

Many top Chinese universities have

setup their strategic goals as WCU.

Most of them have also set time tables

for reaching the goal of WCU. For

example:

2016 for Peking University

2020 for Tsinghua University

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Questions About WCU

Is there a clear definition for WCU?

How many WCU should there be in the

world?

What are the positions of top Chinese

universities in the world?

How can Chinese universities improve

themselves to reach the goal of WCU?

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Academic Ranking of World Universities

Our original purpose of doing the Academic

Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was to

find out the position of Chinese universities in

the world and the gap between them and WCU.

ARWU was put on the internet upon the

encouragement of colleagues from all over the

world. There have been an average of 2000

visitors every day since 2003.

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Features of ARWU

ARWU uses a few carefully selected, objective criteria and internationally comparable data that everyone could verify in some way.

It has been carried out by a ranking team of four persons in the Institute of Higher Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University for their academic interests.

It has been done independently without any financial support from any sources outside the Institute of Higher Education.

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Methodologies & Results

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Selection of Universities

Any university that has any Nobel Laureates,

Fields Medals, Highly Cited Researchers, or

papers published in Nature or Science.

Major universities of every country with

significant amount of papers indexed by

Thomson.

Number of universities scanned: >2000

Number of universities actually ranked: >1000

Number of ranked universities on our web: 500

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Ranking Criteria and Weights

Criteria Indicator Code Weight

Quality of Education

Alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals

Alumni 10%

Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals

Award 20%

Quality of Faculty Highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories

HiCi 20%

Articles published in Nature and Science* N&S 20%

Research Output

Articles in SCIE， SSCI and AHCI SCI 20%

Size of Institution Academic performance with respect to the size of an institution

Size 10%

Total 100%

For institutions specialized in humanities and social sciences such as London School of Economics, N&S is not considered, and the weight of N&S is relocated to other indicators.

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Definition of Indicator: Alumni

The total number of the alumni of an institution

winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals.

Alumni are defined as those who obtain bachelor,

Master’s or doctoral degrees from the institution.

Different weights are set according to the periods

of obtaining degrees. The weight is 100% for

alumni of 1991-2000, 90% for alumni of 1981-

1990, 80% for alumni of 1971-1980, and so on.

If a person obtains more than one degrees from an

institution, the institution is considered once only.

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Definition of Indicator: Award

The total number of the staff of an institution winning Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics and Fields Medal in Mathematics.

Staff is defined as those who work at an institution at the time of winning the prize.

Different weights are set according to the periods of winning the prizes. The weight is 100% for winners since 2001, 90% for winners in 1991-2000, 80% for winners in 1981-1990, 70% for winners in 1971-1980, and so on.

If a winner is affiliated with more than one institution, each institution is assigned the reciprocal of the number of institutions.

For Nobel prizes, if a prize is shared by more than one person, weights are set for winners according to their proportion of prize.

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Definition of Indicator: HiCi

The number of highly cited researchers in 21

broad subject categories in life sciences,

medicine, physical sciences, engineering and

social sciences.

The definition of categories and detailed

procedures can be found at the website of

Institute of Scientific Information.

The total number of HiCi is about 5000, about

4000 of which is university staff.

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Definition of Indicator: N&S

The annual average number of articles published

in Nature and Science in the past five years.

To distinguish the order of author affiliation, a

weight of 100% is assigned for corresponding

author, 50% for first author (second author if the

first author is the same as corresponding author),

25% for the next author, and 10% for other

authors.

Only publications of article type are considered.

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Definition of Indicator: SCI

Total number of articles indexed in Science

Citation Index-expanded (SCIE) and Social

Science Citation Index (SSCI) in the past

year.

A weight of 2 is assigned to articles

indexed in SSCI to compensate the bias

against humanities and social sciences.

Only publications of article type are

considered.

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Definition of Indicator: Size

The sub-total scores of the above five indicators

divided by the number of full-time equivalent

academic staff.

If the number of academic staff for institutions

of a country cannot be obtained, the total

scores of the above five indicators is used.

For ranking 2005, the number of full-time

equivalent academic staff is obtained for

institutions in USA, China, Australia, Italy,

Netherlands, Sweden, and Belgium etc.

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Main Sources of Data

Nobel laureates:

http://www.nobel.se Fields Medals:

http://www.mathunion.org/medals/ Highly-cited researchers:

http://www.isihighlycited.com Articles published in Nature and Science:

http://www.isiknowledge.com Articles indexed in SCIE and SSCI:

http://www.isiknowledge.com

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Results of ARWU

http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm

Top 500 universities in the world Top 100 universities in North and Latin

America Top 100 universities in Asia/Oceania Top 100 universities in Europe Statistics of top universities by region and country Percentage distribution of top universities by

country as compared with the share of global population and GDP

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Problems & Discussion

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Methodological: Education and Service

Education is the basic function of any university,

however, it would be impossible to rank the quality of

education due to the huge differences among the

national systems.

Contribution to the national economic development is

becoming increasingly important for universities,

however, it is impossible to obtain internationally

comparable indicators and data.

The academic or research performance of

universities, a good indication of their reputation, can

be ranked internationally.

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Methodological: Humanities & Social Sciences

Many well-known institutions specialized in humanities and social sciences are ranked relatively low.

Since 2004, the indicator of N&S is not considered for institutions specialized in humanities and social sciences, its weight is relocated to other indicators.

Since 2005, a weight of 2 for articles indexed by SSCI is considered.

Nevertheless, if a university specialized in social sciences and humanities had Nobel Laureates in economics and Highly Cited Researchers in social sciences, it should have good standing.

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Methodological: Language Bias

English is the language of international academic community.

Any ranking based on academic performance will be biased towards institutions in English-speaking countries.

One possible solution: papers published in non-native languages are offered a special weight.

Another possible solution: normalization of total articles by the proportion of journal editors of each country.

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Methodological: Award and Alumni

Universities which started after 1911 do not have a fair chance.

Disciplines not related to the awarding fields do not have a fair chance. Other important awards include Abel, Pulitzer, Turing, Tyler, Pritzker, etc.

Institutions for winning awards and those for doing the researches may not be the same.

Institutions for obtaining degrees and those for pursuing the studies may not be the same.

Postdoctoral training is not considered.

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Methodological: Per Capita Performance

The weight of the Size indicator for per capita

performance is rather low. Large institutions have

relatively high positions in the ranking.

However, it’s very difficult to obtain internationally

comparable data on the number of academic staff.

The types of academic staff: such as purely teaching

staff, teaching and research staff, purely research staff.

The ranks of academic staff: such as professor, associate

professor, reader, lecturer, research scientist etc.

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Technical: Attributions

Many universities have more than one commonly used names: such as Virginia Tech and Virginia Polytechnic and State University.

Variations due to translation: such as Univ Koln and Univ Cologne, Univ Vienna and Univ Wien.

Abbreviated names: such as ETH Zurich for Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.

Some authors only write their departmental or institute names without mentioning their university names.

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Technical: Definition of Institution

University systems: such as Univ California

system, Univ London system.

Affiliated institutions and research

organizations: such as Ecole Polytechnique

Montreal (affiliated to University of Montreal),

CNRS Labs (affiliated to French universities).

Teaching and affiliated Hospitals: complex!

Our answer: according to author’s expression.

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Other Technical Problems

Merging, splitting, inheriting, discontinuing, name-changing of institutions such as:

Univ Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa merged from Univ Natal and Univ Durban-Westville.

University of Innsbruck in Austria splitted into Univ Innsbruck and Innsbruck Medical Univ.

Humboldt Univ Berlin and Free Univ Berlin inheriting the Nobel Prizes of the Berlin University before world war II.

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Ranking by Broad Subject Fields

(ARWU-FIELD)

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Requests for Ranking of World Universities by

Broad subject fields or schools, colleges

and

Subject fields or programs, departments

In addition, many top Chinese universities

want to learn their positions in the world

by broad subject fields or disciplines.

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Definition of Broad Subject Fields

Natural Sciences and Mathematics (SCI)

Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences

(ENG)

Life and Agriculture Sciences (LIFE)

Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy (MED)

Social Sciences (SOC)

Arts and humanities are not ranked

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ARWU-FIELD Indicators and Weights

Code SCI ENG LIFE MED SOC

Alumni 10% 10% 10% 10%

Award 15% 15% 15% 15%

HiCi 25% 25% 25% 25% 25%

TOP 25% 25% 25% 25% 25%

PUB 25% 25% 25% 25% 25%

Fund 25%

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Changes in Indicators and Definition

N&S in ARWU is not used in ARWU-FIELD.

TOP is the percentage of articles published in the top 20% journals of each broad subject field.

Fund is the total engineering-related research expenditures. It’s used only for ENG ranking.

Alumni and Award since 1951 are used for all rankings fields except ENG.

PUB is the total number of articles indexed by Thomson in the past year.

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Results of ARWU-FIELD

http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm

Top 100 universities in SCI Top 100 universities in ENG Top 100 universities in LIFE Top 100 universities in MED Top 100 universities in SOC Statistics of top universities by region &

country List of top universities by number of top fields

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Special Problems in ARWU-FIELD

It’s difficult to obtain data on engineering-

related research expenditures and make

them comparable. For 2007, Fund was

obtained only for US and Canadian

universities.

It’s difficult to separate the Nobel

Laureates in Physiology or Medicine. They

are used in both LIFE and MED ranking.

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Final Remarks

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Controversy of Ranking

Any ranking is controversial and no

ranking is absolutely objective.

University rankings become popular in

many countries. Whether we agree or

not, ranking systems clearly are here to

stay.

The key issue then becomes how to

improve ranking systems for the

benefits of higher education.

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Future Efforts

Study all the above mentioned problems and

continuously improve the ranking

methodologies.

Establish more comprehensive databases of

WCU.

Update ARWU (every August) and ARWU-FIELD

annually (every February).

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Future Efforts (Cont’ed)

Provide ranking of universities specialized

or strong in engineering, medicine, etc.

based on the classification of world

universities.

Provide ranking of universities with

different size, history, budget and function

etc. once internationally comparable data

are obtained.

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Thank you very much

for your attention!

http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm

http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/en/