Why web-based rankings of universities should not be neglected Isidro F. Aguillo World University Rankings Symposium Identifying Excellence and Diversity in International Education: Rankings and Beyond École Normale Supérieure (ENS), Paris. May 18 th 2011

2 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

3 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 4

ACTIVITY IMPACT ARWU (Shanghai)40%60% RANKING QS30%70% TIMES HE (2010)35%65% HEEACT (Taiwan)20%80% WR (Webometrics)50% Customizing the model Most of the Global Rankings use an arbitrary weighting system, without an underlying model 5

Feasibility 6 It is not so easy, sometimes there is no data, or they are not trusted or they are not useful

7 Quality can be measured by consensus or majority of experts evaluating the targeted topic  Survey o Topic: Perceived (subjective) academic reputation o Expertise: Peers with global knowledge (not available) o Size: Medium (several thousands)  Citation analysis o Topic: Empirical (objective) scientific impact (formal communication) o Expertise: Peers o Size: Small (a few hundreds)  Link analysis o Topic: Quality of academic and other web contents o Expertise: Web-editors (peers and non-peers) o Size: Huge (millions) Quality

8 Surprisingly most of the Rankings are being accepted without a critical review of the authorship, the methodology and the results A critical review RankingMissionsIndicatorsModelResultsComments ARWUResearchScientific excellence No model(Top 200) Correlated World class universities (incomplete, mistakes, old data) WEBOMETRICSAllActivity & Impact (Web) Impact factor based Correlated (relevant exceptions) World universities (extreme penalties for bad web policies, search engines biases) HEEACTResearchActivity & Impact (Papers, Citations) Striking not explained model CorrelatedWorld research universities (variables not independent) LEIDENResearchImpact (Citations/Papers) Crown indicator Several “rankings” World research universities (questioned methodology) SCIMAGOResearchActivity OR Impact (Papers, Citations) Ranked by size (!) as default Several “rankings” World research institutions (no composite ranking) THEAllActivities, Prestige (Surveys) & Impact (Citations) No modelNot validMethodology applied incorrectly, unethical (non-cooperating universities are not identified) CHEPSAllMulti-RankCustomizable by end-users! No RankingA collection of colorful smileys

Power-law Distribution 9 SCORE RANK WR QS CWTS ARWU HEEACT 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 Ranking The Ranking Web is one of the first World Rankings to be published and currently it is the one with the largest coverage 10

(Top 1000) WR Jan 2011 Geographical coverage 11

12 Digital Divide

(Top 500) WR Jan 2011 Europe

14 Universities in France

15 Different views are correlated but the position of French universities, also in the Web ranking, is below expectations  Coverage o 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 roles o 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 practices o Surprisingly for the 21 st 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

16 French and Norwegian (and others) Higher Education Ministries visited Shanghai for advice!!. Suggestions provided here are tentative: Rankings should be useful ARWU oriented 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!) Webometrics oriented 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

17 Web should be the showcase of the University, the place for publishing its basic info & facts, organisation, activities, policies, results …  Contents o 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 Contents o Portal of journals / Repository of papers o Media (videos, webinars, objects) and software portals o Data repository / (Web) Archive o Social commitments  International Contents o Multilingual (also English) versions o Guides to foreign students/scholars o Super-sites Web strategies

Learning management systems (LMS)

MIT Open CourseWare 19

Personal Pages

ENS (?) Repository 21 Why not?

Thesis at USP 22

Web 2.0: Priorities RankFacebookYouTubeSocial Bookmarking External BlogsInstitutional Blogs 1Campus LifeEventsCoursesFacultyCampus Life 2SportsCampus Life Projects, Non- Research Research, Physical Sciences Events 3TechnologyFaculty Research, Physical Sciences Institution Overall 4Product ServicesCoursesEventsExpert Commentary Institution Sub- Groups 5Events Institution Overall FacultyEventsAdmissions

24  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

25 Questions? … Thank you! Contact: Isidro F. Aguillo, HcPhD The Cybermetrics Lab. IPP-CCHS-CSIC Open Forum