Why web-based rankings of universities should not be neglected Isidro F. Aguillo

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

2. The Cybermetrics Lab 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 2

3. Why Global Rankings of Universities? 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 3

4. How? A couple of models IMPACT ACTIVITY 4

5. Customizing the model Most of the Global Rankings use an arbitrary weighting system, without an underlying model IMPACT RANKING ACTIVITY 5

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

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

8. A critical review Surprisingly most of the Rankings are being accepted without a critical review of the authorship, the methodology and the results 8

9. SCORE WR log-norm z-score QS ARWU HEEACT CWTS RANK Power-law Distribution 9

10. 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 • 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 10

11. Geographical coverage 5069 414 3484 336 6176 148 594 3 397 5 3392 59 154 35 19266 (Top 1000) WR Jan 2011 11

12. Digital Divide 12

13. Europe 9 1 51 9 67 6 50 16 35 2 671 15 63 2 95 8 48 3 48 0 50 8 233 78 433 19 161 14 411 66 100 10 57 12 330 0 33 4 77 9 75 7 107 10 581 48 32 2 111 6 26 0 203 48 37 0 35 1 60 1 236 48 111 14 64 10 162 13 WR Jan 2011 5069 (Top 500) 3 1 33 8 15 1 13

14. Universities in France 14

15. Comparative Analysis Different views are correlated but the position of French universities, also in the Web ranking, is below expectations • Coverage • Rankings based on research performance where the English is the “lingua franca” of scholar communication are penalizing French language • 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 • Research-based rankings describe “World-class” universities • Web ranking also identify “nation-building” institutions, probably more important to the local communities (social commitment) and governments (economic and political involvement) • Bad practices • Surprisingly for the 21st century, there are academic institutions (its leaders or scholars) that are ignoring the Web: No enough contents • Web policies are inadequate, incorrect or insufficient. Too many institutions, frequent web domain changes, too few repositories 15

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

17. Web strategies Web should be the showcase of the University, the place for publishing its basic info & facts, organisation, activities, policies, results … • Contents • First mission: Traditional and off campus (distance) teaching supporting pages • Second mission: Research groups and (scientists) personal pages, Research projects websites • Third mission: Hosting third parties sites • Quality Contents • Portal of journals / Repository of papers • Media (videos, webinars, objects) and software portals • Data repository / (Web) Archive • Social commitments • International Contents • Multilingual (also English) versions • Guides to foreign students/scholars • Super-sites 17

18. Learning management systems (LMS)

19. MIT Open CourseWare 19

20. Personal Pages

21. ENS (?) Repository http://hal-ens.archives-ouvertes.fr/ Why not? http://archiveouverte.ens.fr/ 21

22. Thesis at USP 22

23. Web 2.0: Priorities

24. Summarizing • Why the Web? • Web presence is an indicator. Web is reflecting overall performance and not only online activities • Web is already the most important scholarly communication tool • Web increases significantly the visibility and impact of the activities and the results of scholars and researchers • 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? • Webometrics is offering the larger coverage, ranking World-class universities but also institutions from emerging and developing countries • 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 • 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 24

25. Open Forum Contact: Isidro F. Aguillo, HcPhDThe Cybermetrics Lab. IPP-CCHS-CSIC isidro.aguillo@cchs.csic.es Questions? …Thank you! 25