Why web-based rankings of universities should not be neglected

Isidro F. Aguillo

World University Rankings SymposiumIdentifying Excellence and Diversity in International Education: Rankings and Beyond École Normale Supérieure (ENS), Paris. May 18th 2011

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A rigorous scientific approach to the ranking of universities

Scholars making scientific research

– Researchers belonging to the National Research Council (CSIC)

• The largest Spanish research public organization

– Recognised by our peers

• 15 years experience in quantitative analysis and evaluation of scholar communication and academic institutions

• Papers in referred scientific journals, contributions to international conferences, reports to governmental bodies

– Funded by public resources

• International cooperation projects funded by European Commission

Research Agenda

– Promote Open Access initiatives

– Global coverage, including universities from developing countries

– Building Cybermetrics/Webometrics as an emerging discipline

The Cybermetrics Lab

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A new powerful tool with a significant impact on Higher Education

The problems of the Higher Education Science in the ‘90s

– Limited impact, not suitable for students/scholars

• “Experts” driven

• Complex reports, difficult to understand

– Lack of global scenarios

• Focus on “US research university” model

International Rankings (ARWU, 2003)

– Huge impact, including governments

• Data driven

• Easy to understand, ONE composite indicator (rank)

– World and continental scenarios

• Excellence clearly defined

• Useful for both individual universities and national systems

Why Global Rankings of Universities?

ACTIVITY IMPACT

How? A couple of models

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ACTIVITY IMPACT

ARWU (Shanghai) 40% 60%

RANKING

QS 30% 70%

TIMES HE (2010) 35% 65%

HEEACT (Taiwan) 20% 80%

WR (Webometrics) 50% 50%

Customizing the modelMost of the Global Rankings use an arbitrary weighting system, without an underlying model

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Feasibility

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It is not so easy, sometimes there is no data, or they are not trusted or they are not useful

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Quality can be measured by consensus or majority of experts evaluating the targeted topic

Surveyo Topic: Perceived (subjective) academic reputation

o Expertise: Peers with global knowledge (not available)

o Size: Medium (several thousands)

Citation analysiso Topic: Empirical (objective) scientific impact (formal communication)

o Expertise: Peers

o Size: Small (a few hundreds)

Link analysiso Topic: Quality of academic and other web contents

o Expertise: Web-editors (peers and non-peers)

o Size: Huge (millions)

Quality

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Surprisingly most of the Rankings are being accepted without a critical review of the authorship, the methodology and the results

A critical review

Ranking Missions Indicators Model Results Comments

ARWU Research Scientific excellence

No model (Top 200) Correlated

World class universities(incomplete, mistakes, old data)

WEBOMETRICS All Activity & Impact (Web)

Impact factor based

Correlated (relevant exceptions)

World universities(extreme penalties for bad web policies, search engines biases)

HEEACT Research Activity & Impact (Papers, Citations)

Striking not explained model

Correlated World research universities (variables not independent)

LEIDEN Research Impact (Citations/Papers)

Crown indicator

Several “rankings”

World research universities (questioned methodology)

SCIMAGO Research Activity OR Impact (Papers, Citations)

Ranked by size (!) as default

Several “rankings”

World research institutions (no composite ranking)

THE All Activities, Prestige (Surveys) & Impact (Citations)

No model Not valid Methodology applied incorrectly, unethical (non-cooperating universities are not identified)

CHEPS All Multi-Rank Customizable by end-users!

No Ranking A collection of colorful smileys

Power-law Distribution

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SCORE

RANK

WR

QS

CWTS

ARWUHEEACT

log-norm

z-score

•Published since 2004, two editions per year (January & July)

•The largest and most updated Directory with more than 20,000 Higher Education Institutions from all over the World

•The Ranking provides the Top 12,000 universities according to web indicators

•The hypothesis is that in the 21st century the web reflects the organization, activities, research results, knowledge transfer, prestige, and international visibility of the universities

•If the web performance is below the expected position could be due to lack of commitment to the electronic publication, or bad web practices

Webometrics RankingThe Ranking Web is one of the first World Rankings to be published and currently it is the one with the largest coverage

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3484336

15435

5943

6176148

339259

3975

5069414

19266(Top 1000)

WRJan 2011

Geographical coverage

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12

Digital Divide

67115

5069(Top 500)

WRJan 2011

Europe

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58148

43319411

66330

0

23648

23378

1116

16114

16213

20348

11114

10710

10010

958

757

779

676

6410

601

5712

5016

508

519

480

483

632

352

351

31

338

334

322

151

91

370

260

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Universities in France

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Different views are correlated but the position of French universities, also in the Web ranking, is below expectations

Coverageo Rankings based on research performance where the English is the “lingua

franca” of scholar communication are penalizing French language

o Webometrics takes into consideration also other university missions including traditional and off campus (distance) teaching in French or transfer of knowledge and technology, also in local language

University roleso Research-based rankings describe “World-class” universities

o Web ranking also identify “nation-building” institutions, probably more important to the local communities (social commitment) and governments (economic and political involvement)

Bad practiceso Surprisingly for the 21st century, there are academic institutions (its leaders or

scholars) that are ignoring the Web: No enough contents

o Web policies are inadequate, incorrect or insufficient. Too many institutions, frequent web domain changes, too few repositories

Comparative Analysis

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French and Norwegian (and others) Higher Education Ministries visited Shanghai for advice!!. Suggestions provided here are tentative:

Rankings should be useful

ARWUoriented

Choose 2-3 universities as World-class candidates

Increase their budget at the expense of the other universities

Give legal capability for offering better salaries and grants

Attract international & national best candidates to these universities

Reinforce research capabilities, transferring elite institutes and hospitals

Fire low performers & close not very productive or international disciplines (Humanities!)

Webometricsoriented

All the universities should reinforce their web presence

Budget should be available to web publication for …

* Reflecting the institution’s performance

* Attracting international students & scholars

* Disseminating the research results

* Giving more visibility to “neglected” disciplines (Humanities!)

* Improve the transfer of technology to industry and other companies

* Increase the knowledge transfer and the community engagement

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Web should be the showcase of the University, the place for publishing its basic info & facts, organisation, activities, policies, results …

Contentso First mission: Traditional and off campus (distance) teaching supporting

pages

o Second mission: Research groups and (scientists) personal pages, Research projects websites

o Third mission: Hosting third parties sites

Quality Contentso Portal of journals / Repository of papers

o Media (videos, webinars, objects) and software portals

o Data repository / (Web) Archive

o Social commitments

International Contentso Multilingual (also English) versions

o Guides to foreign students/scholars

o Super-sites

Web strategies

Learning management systems (LMS)

MIT Open CourseWare

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Personal Pages

ENS (?) Repository

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http://hal-ens.archives-ouvertes.fr/

Why not?http://archiveouverte.ens.fr/

Thesis at USP

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Web 2.0: Priorities

Rank Facebook YouTube Social Bookmarking

External Blogs Institutional Blogs

1 Campus Life Events Courses Faculty Campus Life

2 Sports Campus Life Projects, Non-Research

Research, Physical Sciences Events

3 Technology Faculty Research, Physical Sciences Institution Overall Institution Overall

4 Product Services Courses Events Expert Commentary Institution Sub-Groups

5 Events Institution Overall Faculty Events Admissions

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Why the Web?o Web presence is an indicator. Web is reflecting overall performance and not

only online activities

o Web is already the most important scholarly communication tool

o Web increases significantly the visibility and impact of the activities and the results of scholars and researchers

o Web is the best channel for online and distance learning, the best showcase for attracting international talent (foreign students and professors), the meeting point with the society, the economic and industrial stakeholders

Why the Ranking Web?o Webometrics is offering the larger coverage, ranking World-class universities

but also institutions from emerging and developing countries

o Discrepancies on the web ranking informs about problems with the governance and long-term strategies of the universities, obsolete or inadequate policies and bad web practices

o US universities leadership in Webometrics is showing a concerning and a long term threat to the scientific and cultural presence of the Europeans (and their languages) in the Web

Summarizing

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Questions? …Thank you!

Contact:Isidro F. Aguillo, HcPhDThe Cybermetrics Lab. IPP-CCHS-CSICisidro.aguillo@cchs.csic.es

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