Universties global ranking systems

1. Ph D
Ahmed M. Metwaly

2. ▪ Definition
▪ Types
▪ Academic Ranking of World Universities
▪ QS World University Rankings
▪ Times Higher Education World University Rankings
▪ Other global rankings

3. ▪ College and university rankings are
rankings of institutions in higher education which have been ranked on the basis of
various combinations of various factors.

4. 1. Academic rankings with the main purpose of producing university league tables
▪ Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) – Shanghai Ranking Consultancy
▪ THE World University Ranking – Times Higher Education
▪ Quacquarelli Symonds QS World University Rankings
2. Rankings concentrating on research performance only (with or without league tables)
▪ Leiden Ranking – Leiden University
▪ Performance Rankings of Scientific Papers for World Universities – Taiwan Higher Education
Accreditation and Evaluation Council
▪ Assessment of University-Based Research – European Commission
3. Multirankings – university rankings and classifications using a number of indicators without the
intention of producing league tables
4.Web rankings

5. ▪ The story of ARWU actually begins in 1998 when Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) was
selected by the Chinese government to be among the first group of nine universities in the ‘985
Project’. This project was set up in response to a statement by Jiang Zemin (the then President of
the People’s Republic of China) that China must have a certain number of top, world-class
universities.
▪ From 1999 to2001, a SJTU team worked on a project to benchmark top Chinese universities with US
research universities ‘in order to find out the gap between Chinese universities and world-class
universities’.
▪ After the team submitted its report to the Chinese Ministry of Education and it was published,
Chinese and foreign reactions to the report recommended making it into a real ranking of world
universities.This ranking was first published in 2003 and has been updated annually ever since.
▪ SJTU supported the publication with ARWU until 2009 when an independent consultancy was
established.

7. ▪ Alumni
The total number of the alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals. Alumni are
defined as those who obtain bachelor's, 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 obtaining
degrees after 2011, 90% for alumni obtaining degrees in 2001-2010, 80% for alumni obtaining degrees in
1991-2000, and so on, and finally 10% for alumni obtaining degrees in 1921-1930. If a person obtains more
than one degrees from an institution, the institution is considered once only.
▪ 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 after 2011, 90% for winners in 2001-2010, 80% for winners in 1991-2000, 70%
for winners in 1981-1990, and so on, and finally 10% for winners in 1921-1930. 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 the prize.

8. ▪ HiCi (Highly Cited Researchers)
The number of Highly Cited Researchers selected by Clarivate Analytics.The Highly Cited Researchers
list issued in December 2018 (2018 HCR List as of December 6, 2018) was used for the calculation of HiCi
indicator in ARWU 2019. Only the primary affiliations of Highly Cited Researchers are considered.
Recognizing the world's most influential researchers of the past decade, demonstrated by the production
of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science
▪ N&S (Papers published in Nature and Science)
The number of papers published in Nature and Science between 2014 and 2018.To distinguish the order
of author affiliation, a weight of 100% is assigned for corresponding author affiliation, 50% for first author
affiliation (second author affiliation if the first author affiliation is the same as corresponding author
affiliation), 25% for the next author affiliation, and 10% for other author affiliations.When there are more
than one corresponding author addresses, we consider the first corresponding author address as the
corresponding author address and consider other corresponding author addresses as first author address,
second author address etc. following the order of the author addresses. Only publications of 'Article' type
is considered.

9. ▪ PUB (Papers indexed in Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation Index)
Total number of papers indexed in Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation
Index in 2018. Only publications of 'Article' type is considered.When calculating the total number of
papers of an institution, a special weight of two was introduced for papers indexed in Social Science
Citation Index.
▪ PCP (Per capita academic performance of an institution)
The weighted 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
weighted scores of the above five indicators is used. For ARWU 2019, the numbers of full-time
equivalent academic staff are obtained for institutions in USA, UK, France, Canada, Japan, Italy, China,
Australia, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, South Korea, Czech, Slovenia, New Zealand etc.

10. Nobel Prize http://www.nobelprize.org/
Fields Medals http://www.mathunion.org/
HiCi https://clarivate.com/hcr/
N&S http://www.webofscience.com/
PUB http://www.webofscience.com/
Others
Number of academic staff data is obtained from national agencies such as
National Ministry of Education, National Bureau of Statistics,National
Association of Universities and Colleges, National Rector's Conference.

15. ▪ The Times Higher Education World University Rankings was first published in 2004. In a
way, it was an ‘answer’ to the Shanghai ARWU ranking that was first published in 2003.
▪ The then Times Higher Education Supplement, which later became the independent
Times Higher Education Ranking, used Quacquarelli-Symonds (QS) as its data collection
and processing engine between 2004 and 2009.
▪ In 2009 the Times Higher Education (hereafter THE) announced that it was ceasing
cooperation with QS and that a new cooperation was being established with Thomson
Reuters.
▪ THE has since announced its new methodology for the 2010 World Universities Ranking.

16. ▪ The performance indicators are grouped into five areas:
▪ Teaching (the learning environment);
▪ Research (volume, income and reputation);
▪ Citations (research influence);
▪ International outlook (staff, students and research); and
▪ Industry Income (knowledge transfer)

18. ▪ The most recent Academic Reputation Survey (run annually) that underpins this category was
carried out between November 2018 and March 2019. It examined the perceived prestige of
institutions in teaching. The responses were statistically representative of the global academy’s
geographical and subject mix. The 2019 data are combined with the results of the 2018 survey,
giving more than 21,000 responses.

19. ▪ We examine research influence by capturing the average number of times a university’s published
work is cited by scholars globally. This year, our bibliometric data supplier Elsevier examined 77.4
million citations to 12.8 million journal articles, article reviews, conference proceedings, books and
book chapters published over five years. The data include more than 23,400 academic journals
indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus database and all indexed publications between 2014 and 2018.
Citations to these publications made in the six years from 2014 to 2019 are also collected

20. ▪ Institutions provide and sign off their institutional data for use in the rankings. On the rare
occasions when a particular data point is not provided, we enter a conservative estimate for the
affected metric. By doing this, we avoid penalising an institution too harshly with a “zero” value
for data that it overlooks or does not provide, but we do not reward it for withholding them.

21. ▪ Its an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (a British
company specializing in education QS). Previously known as Times Higher Education–QS
World University Rankings, the publisher had collaborated with Times Higher Education
(THE) magazine to publish its international league tables from 2004 to 2009 before both
started to announce their own versions.
▪ QS then chose to continue using the pre-existing methodology while Times Higher
Education adopted a new methodology to create their rankings.
▪ The QS system now comprises the global overall and subject rankings (which name the
world's top universities for the study of 48 different subjects and five composite faculty
areas), alongside five independent regional tables (Asia, Latin America, Emerging
Europe and Central Asia, the Arab Region, and BRICS)

22. ▪ Universities are evaluated according to the following six metrics:
▪ Academic Reputation
▪ Employer Reputation
▪ Faculty/Student Ratio
▪ Citations per faculty
▪ International Faculty Ratio
▪ International Student Ratio

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24. ▪ The highest weighting of any metric is allotted to an institution’s Academic Reputation score.
Based on our Academic Survey, it collates the expert opinions of over 94,000 individuals in the
higher education space regarding teaching and research quality at the world’s universities. In
doing so, it has grown to become the world’s largest survey of academic opinion, and, in terms of
size and scope, is an unparalleled means of measuring sentiment in the academic community.

25. ▪ Students will continue to perceive a university education as a means by which they can receive
valuable preparation for the employment market. It follows that assessing how successful
institutions are at providing that preparation is essential for a ranking whose primary audience is
the global student community.
▪ Our Employer Reputation metric is based on almost 45,000 responses to our QS Employer Survey,
and asks employers to identify those institutions from which they source the most competent,
innovative, effective graduates.The QS Employer Survey is also the world’s largest of its kind.

26. ▪ Teaching quality is typically cited by students as the metric of highest importance to them when
comparing institutions using a ranking. It is notoriously difficult to measure, but we have
determined that measuring teacher/student ratios is the most effective proxy metric for teaching
quality. It assesses the extent to which institutions are able to provide students with meaningful
access to lecturers and tutors, and recognizes that a high number of faculty members per student
will reduce the teaching burden on each individual academic.
▪ Faculty/student Ratio constitutes 20 percent of an institution’s final score.

27. ▪ Teaching is one key pillar of an institution’s mission. Another is research output. We measure
institutional research quality using our Citations per Faculty metric. To calculate it, we the total
number of citations received by all papers produced by an institution across a five-year period by
the number of faculty members at that institution.
▪ To account for the fact that different fields have very different publishing cultures – papers
concerning the Life Sciences are responsible nearly half of all research citations as of 2015 – we
normalize citations. This means that a citation received for a paper in Philosophy is measured
differently to one received for a paper on Anatomy and Physiology, ensuring that, in evaluating an
institution’s true research impact, both citations are given equal weight.
▪ We use a five-year publication window for papers, so for this edition we looked at papers published
from 2013 to 2017. We then take a look at a six-year citation window; reflecting the fact that it takes
time for research to be effectively disseminated. In this edition we look for citations from 2013-2018.
▪ All citations data is sourced using Elsevier’s Scopus database, the world’s largest repository of
academic journal data. This year, QS assessed 74 million citations from 13.5 million papers once self-
citations were excluded.

28. ▪ A highly international university acquires and confers a number of advantages. It demonstrates an
ability to attract faculty and students from across the world, which in turn suggests that it possesses
a strong international brand. It implies a highly global outlook: essentially for institutions operating
in an internationalised higher education sector. It also provides both students and staff alike with a
multinational environment, facilitating exchange of best practices and beliefs. In doing so, it
provides students with international sympathies and global awareness: soft skills increasingly
valuable to employers. Both of these metrics are worth 5% of the overall total.

32. Ph. D. Ahmed M. Metwaly
Assistant professor, Pharmacognosy department,
Faculty of Pharmacy, Al-Azhar University.
ametwaly@azhar.edu.eg