Thomson Reuters today launched the first of its surveys among academics to try to identify which of more than 6,000 universities worldwide are the strongest in specific fields both in terms of teaching, and of research. The data will be used for the Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings. It’s part of efforts by the THE ranking list to remake itself in the face of criticism.
Nature last week published a two-page news article exploring new trends in university ranking systems. See below the fold for some snippets from the article about the Thomson Reuters’s reputational survey – if you missed the Nature article, you can read it in full here – “University rankings smarten up”.
One complaint is that the THE’s rankings rely heavily on reputational surveys, which involve polling academics about which universities they think are the best in a given field. Some argue that these assessments often use too few academics, who may not be well informed about all the universities they are being asked to judge, and that there is a bias towards English-speaking countries.
In November 2009, the THE announced that the data for its rankings would no longer be supplied by QS, a London-based higher-education media company. “We are very much aware that national policy and multimillion-pound decisions are influenced by these rankings,” said THE editor Ann Mroz at the time. “We are also acutely aware of the criticisms made of the methodology. Therefore, we feel we have a duty to improve how we compile them.”
The THE will in future draw its ranking data from the Global Institutional Profiles Project, which was launched by data provider Thomson Reuters in January. The project aims to create a comprehensive database on thousands of the world’s universities, including details of research funding, numbers of researchers and PhDs awarded, and measures of educational performance. The company will also use its internal citation and publication data to generate multiple indicators of institutions’ research performance, and will build in auditing procedures to guard against misinformation provided by universities.
Thomson Reuters plans to continue reputational surveys, but aims to have at least 25,000 reviewers, compared with the 4,000 used by QS for the THE 2009 rankings. It has partnered with UK pollster Ipsos MORI to try to ensure the survey is representative. “We are not doing this randomly, but putting a lot of thought behind it,” says Simon Pratt, project manager for institutional research at Thomson Reuters. “We want a more balanced view across all subject areas.”