Do Rankings Reflect Research Quality?

Publication and citation rankings have become major indicators of the scientific worth of universities and countries, and determine to a large extent the career of individual scholars. We argue that such rankings do not effectively measure research quality, which should be the essence of evaluation. For that reason, an alternative ranking is developed as a quality indicator, based on membership on academic editorial boards of professional journals. It turns out that especially the ranking of individual scholars is far from objective. The results differ markedly, depending on whether research quantity or research quality is considered. Even quantity rankings are not objective; two citation rankings, based on different samples, produce entirely different results. It follows that any career decisions based on rankings are dominatedby chance and do not reflect research quality. Instead of propagating a ranking based on board membership as the gold standard, we suggest that committees make use of this quality indicator to find members who, in turn, evaluate the research quality of individual scholars.rankings, universities, scholars, publications, citations

Cultural Branding: An Examination of Website Marketing Practices at Historically Black College and Universities and non-HBCU Black Serving Institutions

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference between the way that higher education marketing professionals at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and non-HBCU Black Serving Institutions (BSIs) use website marketing techniques for institutional branding. This examination was prompted by Gasman (2007) who suggested that the inability of some HBCUs to garner and/or maintain sufficient enrollment numbers stems from poor image management. Further, Gibbs (2015) suggested that a comparison between HBCU websites and Traditionally White Institution (TWI) websites might be beneficial. Thus, this study sought to answer the following research questions: RQ1. Is there a difference in the content marketing practices used at HBCUs compared to those at non-HBCU BSIs? RQ2. Is there a difference in the degree of access that students have to recommended content on the website homepages of HBCUs compared to those of non-HBCU BSIs? RQ3. Is there a difference in the image marketing practices used by education marketing professionals at HBCUs compared to those at non-HBCU BSIs? An instrument, modeled after the scoresheet of Harper (2001), was developed for the purpose of rating access to 18 content items and representation of 6 racial groups. Data were collected by three raters from the homepages of the college websites of 54 institutions located in Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina (26 HBCUs and 28 non-HBCU BSIs). A one-way ANOVA was used to answer research question one. Research question two and three were assessed using a logistic regression. Results indicated that while there is not a significant difference in the number of desired content items available between HBCUs and non-HBCU BSIs, there is a significant difference in the individual access to about sections, application deadlines, visitation requests, mail requests, and information about programs. Additionally, there was found to be a significant difference in homepage representation of Hispanics

Webometric Analysis of Central Universities in India: A Study

Web presence of Indian Universities has been reflected in general and Central Universities in particular. Webometric data have been collected through Yahoo! and Google search engines using special query syntax. An attempt has been made to rank Central Universities in India using appropriate webometric indicators. Results reveled that University of Delhi becomes top rank (with score 4.28 and Sikkim University occupied the last (with score 1.64) among Central Universities in India

Aggregation of the web performance of internal university units as a method of quantitative analysis of a university system: the case of Spain

The aggregation of web performance data (page count and visibility) of internal university units could constitute a more precise indicator than the overall web performance of the universities and, therefore, be of use in the design of university web rankings. In order to test this hypothesis, a longitudinal analysis of the internal units of the Spanish university system was conducted over the course of 2010. For the 13,800 URLs identified, page count and visibility were calculated using the Yahoo! API. The internal values obtained were aggregated by university and compared with the values obtained from the analysis of the universities' general URLs. The results indicate that, although the correlations between general and internal values are high, internal performance is low in comparison to general performance, and that they give rise to different performance rankings. The conclusion is that the aggregation of unit performance is of limited use due to the low levels of internal development of the websites, and so its use is not recommended for the design of rankings. Despite this, the internal analysis enabled the detection of, among other things, a low correlation between page count and visibility due to the widespread use of subdirectories and problems accessing certain content.Orduña Malea, E. (2013). Aggregation of the web performance of internal university units as a method of quantitative analysis of a university system: the case of Spain. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 64(10):2100-2114. doi:10.1002/asi.22912S210021146410Aguillo, I. F., Granadino, B., Ortega, J. L., & Prieto, J. A. (2006). Scientific research activity and communication measured with cybermetrics indicators. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(10), 1296-1302. doi:10.1002/asi.20433Aguillo, I. F., Ortega, J. L., Fernández, M., & Utrilla, A. M. (2010). Indicators for a webometric ranking of open access repositories. Scientometrics, 82(3), 477-486. doi:10.1007/s11192-010-0183-yBarjak, F., Li, X., & Thelwall, M. (2006). Which factors explain the Web impact of scientists’ personal homepages? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(2), 200-211. doi:10.1002/asi.20476Chu, H., He, S., & Thelwall, M. (2002). Library and Information Science Schools in Canada and USA: A Webometric Perspective. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 43(2), 110. doi:10.2307/40323972Glänzel , W. Debackere , K. 2009 On the “multi-dimensionality” of rankings: Some methodological and mathematical questions to be solved in university assessmentHix, S. (2004). A Global Ranking of Political Science Departments. Political Studies Review, 2(3), 293-313. doi:10.1111/j.1478-9299.2004.00011.xLi , X. 2005 National and international university departmental Web site interlinking: a webometric analysisLi, X. (2003). Scientometrics, 57(2), 239-255. doi:10.1023/a:1024189702463Li, X., Thelwall, M., Wilkinson, D., & Musgrove, P. (2005). National and international university departmental Web site interlinking. Scientometrics, 64(2), 151-185. doi:10.1007/s11192-005-0246-7Li, X., Thelwall, M., Wilkinson, D., & Musgrove, P. (2005). National and international university departmental Web site interlinking. Scientometrics, 64(2), 187-208. doi:10.1007/s11192-005-0247-6NERI, F., & RODGERS, J. R. (2006). Ranking Australian Economics Departments by Research Productivity. Economic Record, 82(s1), S74-S84. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4932.2006.00334.xOrduña-Malea , E. 2012 Propuesta de un modelo de análisis redinformétrico multinivel para el estudio sistémico de las universidades españolas (2010)Orduña-Malea E. Espacio universitario español en la Web (2010): estudio descriptivo de instituciones y productos académicos a través del análisis de subdominios y subdirectoriosOrduña-Malea, E., Serrano-Cobos, J., & Lloret-Romero, N. (2009). Las universidades públicas españolas en Google Scholar: presencia y evolución de su publicación académica web. El Profesional de la Informacion, 18(5), 493-500. doi:10.3145/epi.2009.sep.02Orduña-Malea, E., Serrano-Cobos, J., Ontalba-Ruipérez, J. A., & Lloret-Romero, N. (2010). Presencia y visibilidad web de las universidades públicas españolas. Revista española de Documentación Científica, 33(2), 246-278. doi:10.3989/redc.2010.2.740Ortega , J.L. 2007 Visualización de la Web universitaria Europea: análisis cuantitativo de enlaces a través de técnicas cibermétricasTang, R., & Thelwall, M. (2003). U.S. academic departmental Web-site interlinking in the United States Disciplinary differences. Library & Information Science Research, 25(4), 437-458. doi:10.1016/s0740-8188(03)00053-7Tang, R., & Thelwall, M. (2004). Patterns of national and international Web inlinks to US academic departments: An analysis of disciplinary variations. Scientometrics, 60(3), 475-485. doi:10.1023/b:scie.0000034388.70594.ccThelwall, M. (2011). A comparison of link and URL citation counting. Aslib Proceedings, 63(4), 419-425. doi:10.1108/00012531111148985Thelwall, M., & Harries, G. (2004). Can Personal Web Pages that Link to Universities Yield Information about the Wider Dissemination of Research? Journal of Information Science, 30(3), 240-253. doi:10.1177/0165551504044669Thelwall, M., & Harries, G. (2003). Do the Web sites of higher rated scholars have significantly more online impact? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(2), 149-159. doi:10.1002/asi.10362Thelwall, M., Li, X., Barjak, F., & Robinson, S. (2008). Assessing the international web connectivity of research groups. Aslib Proceedings, 60(1), 18-31. doi:10.1108/00012530810847344Thomas, O., & Willett, P. (2000). Webometric analysis of departments of librarianship and information science. Journal of Information Science, 26(6), 421-428. doi:10.1177/016555150002600605Utrilla Ramírez, A. M., Fernández, M., Ortega, J. L., & Aguillo, I. F. (2009). Clasificación Web de hospitales del mundo: situación de los hospitales en la red. Medicina Clínica, 132(4), 144-153. doi:10.1016/j.medcli.2008.05.00

The development of computer science research in the People's Republic of China 2000-2009: A bibliometric study

This paper reports a bibliometric study of the development of computer science research in the People's Republic of China in the 21st century, using data from the Web of Science, Journal Citation Reports and CORE databases. Focusing on the areas of data mining, operating systems and web design, it is shown that whilst the productivity of Chinese research has risen dramatically over the period under review, its impact is still low when compared with established scientific nations such as the USA, the UK and Japan. The publication and citation data for China are compared with corresponding data for the other three BRIC nations (Brazil, Russian and India). It is shown that China dominates the BRIC nations in terms of both publications and citations, but that Indian publications often have a greater individual impact. © The Author(s) 2012

Commitment to Sustainability: How Sustainability is Reflected in UAE Universities: An Exploratory Study

Vision, mission, and value statements are important elements in every organization in communicating the core values and practices the organization follows. In higher education institutions, they play an important role in the road map of the institution and how the institution is engaged with all its stakeholders. The aim of the research is to examine the visibility of information about sustainability on the websites of UAE universities. Universities are important players when it comes to communicating Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as they have an important role in societal awareness about sustainable development. To what extent do the mission, vision, and value statements reflect the sustainability of the higher educational institutions that are investigated? The study employs a quantitative content analysis method to explore elements of SDGs by looking for keywords that are associated with the terms ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainability’ and associated with the 17 SDGs. The sample includes 27 local universities across the UAE. The collected data from universities’ websites are analyzed using AntConc, a software for textual analysis. Only nine universities included a general term for sustainability in their documents. There was a mention of only six SDGs, and SDG9, followed by SDG4, were the most mentioned ones. The performance of the higher educational institutions in sustainability and how these are communicated should be focused strategically. The study will show the way to look at local practices when it comes to SDG communication and be the catalyst for comparative studies that can help establish best practices and guidelines for universities in the region

Publishing cooperative and work-integrated education literature: The Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education

The Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education (APJCE) was founded in 1999, with the first volume published in 2000. The journal strongly adhered to the philosophy of having freely and readily accessible information, and opted to be a free, fully online, open access journal. Over the last 12 years, the journal has grown and has become well-established in the cooperative (co-op) and work-integrated learning (WIL) community. The number of publications per year has steadily increased and the number of submissions has shown strong growth, especially in the last three years. APJCE articles are increasingly cited in other journals and significant book publications, and both its author and user bases have become more international. This article will discuss the advantages from the APJCE perspective of being an open access journal and provide an analysis of the growth of APJCE. The article will also discuss the performance of the journal in the context of co-op/WIL literature internationally and discuss some recent developments for the journal

EVALUATION OF THE INDIAN TOP 10 PHARMA EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS RESEARCH OUTPUT LISTED BY NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL RANKING FRAMEWORK (NIRF) 2020: A SCIENTOMETRIC STUDY

The Higher Education System Rankings measure national higher education systems and meet a long-standing need to shift the discussion from the ranking of the NIRF top institutions to the best overall systems in each country, to reflect the country’s overall performance in NIRF rankings we propose a new Excellence/Quality indicator based on the excellence level reached by their Top Pharma education institutions within the Top positions of the NIRF weighted by the country’s size population. In the present study, we analyzed the Top 10 Pharma education institutions of the NIRF Ranking 2020. The first rank positioned by Hamdard University NIRF score of (80.5). SCOPUS database was used to extract the data and the study was limited to five years (2016-2019) which resulted in 7172 documents. The data analysis was performed using Biblioshiny, Microsoft excel, and VOS Viewer software, further data were explored using the bibliometrics tools and techniques. The study attempt to measure the top 10 Pharma Education Institution’s and their publications, Year-Wise distribution of research Output, document type, Highly Prolific Authors, Most Preferred Sources, Funding Agencies, Most Cited Papers, Most Productive and Most Cited Countries, and Highly Prolific Keywords based on the collected data. The analysis of the study indicates the highest publications with 2129, published by Institute of Chemical Technology-Mumbai; the most the productive year 2017 with 1508 publications; most of the publications are published as articles (6067); highly prolific author Sekar N with 194 papers, total citation 1954, h-index 22; preferred source title RSC Advance, 217 paper, total citation 2508, h-index 24; top funding agency University Grant Commission (UGC) 609 papers; top cited paper Shao Y, 2015, Molecular Physics; most productive and most cited country the USA