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Comparing university rankings

Author

Listed:
  • Isidro F. Aguillo

    (CCHS – CSIC)

  • Judit Bar-Ilan

    (Bar-Ilan University)

  • Mark Levene

    (Birkbeck University of London)

  • José Luis Ortega

    (VICYT – CSIC)

Abstract

Recently there is increasing interest in university rankings. Annual rankings of world universities are published by QS for the Times Higher Education Supplement, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Higher Education and Accreditation Council of Taiwan and rankings based on Web visibility by the Cybermetrics Lab at CSIC. In this paper we compare the rankings using a set of similarity measures. For the rankings that are being published for a number of years we also examine longitudinal patterns. The rankings limited to European universities are compared to the ranking of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University. The findings show that there are reasonable similarities between the rankings, even though each applies a different methodology. The biggest differences are between the rankings provided by the QS-Times Higher Education Supplement and the Ranking Web of the CSIC Cybermetrics Lab. The highest similarities were observed between the Taiwanese and the Leiden rankings from European universities. Overall the similarities are increased when the comparison is limited to the European universities.

Suggested Citation

  • Isidro F. Aguillo & Judit Bar-Ilan & Mark Levene & José Luis Ortega, 2010. "Comparing university rankings," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(1), pages 243-256, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:85:y:2010:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-010-0190-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-010-0190-z
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Webster, Thomas J., 2001. "A principal component analysis of the U.S. News & World Report tier rankings of colleges and universities," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 235-244, June.
    2. Bar-Ilan, Judit & Levene, Mark & Lin, Ayelet, 2007. "Some measures for comparing citation databases," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 26-34.
    3. Isidro F. Aguillo & Begoña Granadino & José L. Ortega & José A. Prieto, 2006. "Scientific research activity and communication measured with cybermetrics indicators," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(10), pages 1296-1302, August.
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