Sunday, December 18, 2011

Leiden Ranking: Many Ways to Rate Research My article on the Leiden Rankings in University World News can be found here. It looks as though a two-tier international university ranking system is emerging.At the top we have the 'big three', Shanghai's Academic Ranking of World Universities, the QS World University Rankings and, since 2010, the Times Higher Education World University

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Update 6 on El Naschie vs NatureThere have been no reports for several days and the trial is now over. There will be a judgement in January.
What to do about the research bustMark Bauerlein has an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the disparity between the extraordinary effort and intelligence poured into scholarly writing in the humanities and the meager attention such writing receives."I devised a study of literary research in four English departments at public universities—the University of Georgia, the University

Thursday, December 1, 2011

European Universities and RankingsResearch Trends, the newsletter from Scopus,  reports on  a conference of European universities that discussed international rankings. The participants found positive aspects to rankings but also had criticisms:Going through the comparison of the various methodologies, the report details what is actually measured, how the scores for indicators are measured, and
Diversity and RankingsRobert Morse, director of data research at the US News and World Report discusses the question of whether "diversity" should be included in the ranking of American law schools."I was one of speakers on the "Closing Plenary: Reforming U.S. News Rankings to Include Diversity" panel, which discussed many of the issues pertaining to whether U.S. News should add a measure of