Rankings again: RU11 Universities Request for a revision of the assessment methods

[toughyear]

<h1>The Research University or college ranking business is taken very seriously by universities around the world because it often affects their ability to attract funds, resources, top notch faculty, and top quality students. Schools often set some of their future goals using the metrics from these ranking agencies. So, the ranking metric used by the ranking entities (THE or USNWR) should be very objective and impartial, and try to use a quantitative measure that really reflect the quality very carefully, whether it is about the undergraduate education and experience or about the research quality and productivity of the research universities. The schools in Asia, which rank in the 100s in the THE World ranking, are very sensitive to their relative ranking in the Asian continent. Maybe its because of their pride if nothing else, or because the government bureaucrats and funding agencies or the alumni body give the schools trouble if they don’t rank well. Anyway, here is the criticism by Japanese universities on the methodology used by THE. The current THE methodology used favors China and Honkong way over Japan. Maybe it is similar in USNWR metrics which favor the Ivy schools. Whether we like it or not, when these numbers (of USNWR rank) have material impact on the quality of matriculating students in these colleges, there have to be some critical analyses and debates to improve the methodology to make them a fair and objective measure, rather than leaving it to the commercial entity which may be biased.</h1>

<p>The RU11 University Association
Hokkaido University
Tohoku University
Tsukuba University
University of Tokyo
Waseda University
Keio University
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Nagoya University
Kyoto University
Osaka University
Kyushu University</p>

<p>

Statement by the RU11 University Association: Request for a revision of the assessment methods used by Thomson Reuters for the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings</p>

<p>The purpose of analyzing academic research data, particularly publication and citation trends is to provide diverse objective information on universities and other academic institutions that can be used by researchers and institutions for various evaluations and the setting of objectives. The 2010 Thomson Reuters / THE World University Rankings, however, do not give sufficient consideration to the unique characteristics of universities in different countries or the differing research needs and demands from society based on country, culture and academic field. As a result, those rankings are likely to lead to an unbalanced misreading and misuse of the citation index.</p>

<p>RU11 strongly requests, therefore, that Thomson Reuters / THE endeavors to contribute to academic society by providing objective and impartial data, rather than imposing a simplistic and trivialized form of university assessment.</p>

<p>Specifically, we request that Thomson Reuters addresses the following three issues:</p>

<p>1.The ranking of citations based on either citations per author (or faculty) or citations per paper represent two fundamentally different ways of thinking with regards to academic institutions: are the institutions to be viewed as an aggregation of their researchers, or as an aggregation of the papers they have produced? We believe that the correct approach is to base the citations ranking on citations per faculty, as has been the practice in the past.
2.We request a revision of the method used for regional modification.
3.We request the disclosure if the raw numerical data used to calculate the citation impact score for the various research fields at each university.</p>

<p>

[Statement</a> by the RU11 University Association: Request for a revision of the assessment methods used by Thomson Reuters for the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings | Nagoya University](<a href=“http://www.nagoya-u.ac.jp/en/global-info/news-events/20110731.html]Statement”>http://www.nagoya-u.ac.jp/en/global-info/news-events/20110731.html)</p>

<p>5-yr Citations with regional modifications favor Hongkong and Chinese Universities over Japanese Universities because now the Asian top universities are Hongkong and Chinese and the Japan universities are relative low. But the 11-yr Citation counts without regional modification, Japanese universities become the top Asian universities in this department, with Korean universities moving slightly up. [I personally think the quality of research from Japan is higher than from China].
<a href=“http://www.nagoya-u.ac.jp/en/pdf/global-info/ref2.pdf?20111021[/url]”>http://www.nagoya-u.ac.jp/en/pdf/global-info/ref2.pdf?20111021&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Also, moving from citation per paper (the current methodology), which favors chinese and hongkong schools to citation per faculty (the proposed one) favors Japanese schools.</p>

[StillGreen]

<p>Dear THEWUR Committee,</p>

<pre><code> We are bringing to your attention that your arbitrary choice of ranking criteria, has placed our universities in unflattering positions as ranked against our Asian competitors. We strongly request that you adopt our version of arbitrary ranking criteria instead, such that our universities can move up the pecking order and repair our bruised ego, especially facing our Asian competitors.

                Sincerely,

                RU11

</code></pre>

[Erin_s_Dad]

<p>^ Very good.</p>

[xiggi]

<p>

RU11 strongly requests, therefore, that Thomson Reuters / THE endeavors to contribute to academic society by providing objective and impartial data, rather than imposing a simplistic and trivialized form of university assessment.

</p>

<p>How comical!</p>