Unveiling the Experience of IZTECH

Izmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH), a university campus located in a rural area, establishes a different social and spatial relationship with the city and its immediate surroundings. This chapter focuses on assessing the socio-spatial sustainability of the campus before and during the pandemic, together with the evaluation of UI GreenMetric World University Rankings (GreenMetric). The study has the basis of the content analysis of IZTECH GreenMetric evaluations and a critical review of sustainability issues through questionnaire technique applied to campus users, including administrative, academic staff, and students at IZTECH. The multidimensional survey has been designed to grasp the perspectives of the campus users on the sustainability performance of the campus, and to gather some intangible data on the COVID-19 period and its impacts on the use of campus spaces. In conclusion, this chapter is going to suggest a road map to guide sustainability measures of campuses for more adaptable and resilient solutions under unexpected circumstances.

Comprehensive quantitative analysis of TOP-100s of ARWU, QS and THE World University Rankings for 2014–2018

The article examines the global university reputation race, launched in 2003. Between 2003 and 2010, there appeared a cluster of publications on the qualitative comparative analysis of their methodologies, and since 2010, a cluster of publications on the quantitative comparative analysis of university rankings has started to form. The review made it possible to identify a number of unsolved problems concerning the stability of university rankings, aggregation of the number of universities and their Overall Scores (Total Scores) by country in various rankings. Our study aimed at solving these tasks was carried out for TOP-100s of ARWU, QS, and THE rankings. When calculating the fluctuation range of the university rankings, the top twenty of the most stable and most unstable university rankings were identified in the rankings under study. The best values of the aggregated indicators by the number of universities and the Overall Scores were identified for the USA and the UK.

НАУКОМЕТРИЧНІ ПОКАЗНИКИ ОЦІНЮВАННЯ РЕЗУЛЬТАТИВНОСТІ ДОСЛІДЖЕНЬ НАУКОВИХ УСТАНОВ І ЗАКЛАДІВ ОСВІТИ

У статті розглянуто основні наукометричні показники для оцінювання результативності досліджень наукових установ і закладів освіти та досліджено залежність місця наукових установ і закладів освіти у світових та вітчизняних рейтингах від показників наукометричних баз даних, адже нині наявність закладу в міжнародних рейтингах не лише популяризує заклад, а й надає можливість отримання підвищеного фінансування в цілому, і враховується в конкурсному оцінюванні під час державного або грантового фінансування університетської та академічної науки. Так, серед найзатребуваніших наукометричних показників означено загальну кількість публікацій та h-index (індекс цитувань) –дані, що отримуються з наукометричних баз даних Scopus, Web of Science або ж Google Scholar. Проаналізовано можливості вказаних наукометричних баз та сервісу Бібліометрика української науки (пошук та упорядкування науковців установи за h-index, розподіл учених/публікацій за галузями наук/роками/установами, рейтинг установ за кількістю вчених, h-index яких більше певного числа та ін.) для наукових установ і закладів освіти України загалом та вибірково. Визначено, що у Times Higher Education World University Rankings для визначення місця закладу/установи використовують показник «продуктивність дослідження» (кількість публікацій, опублікованих в академічних журналах, проіндексованих наукометричною базою даних Scopus на одного вченого, масштабовано відповідно до розміру закладу та унормовано за темою) складає 6% від загального внеску визначення позиції; та «цитування» (вплив дослідження) – 30%); у QS World University Rankings – «цитування» (середня кількість цитувань у наукометричній базі даних Scopus за 5 років на викладача, унормована згідно галузі) – 40 % внеску; у Transparent Ranking – цитування у наукометричній базі даних Google Scholar; у Ranking Web або Webometrics використовують дані, отримані Transparent Ranking (внесок наукометричних показників – 50 %); в українських рейтингах – Топ-200 Україна місце закладу визначається за показниками Scopus, у Консолідованому рейтингу вишів України значна частка залежить від h-index Scopus. Наведено дані щодо місць українських закладів вищої освіти в означених рейтингах. Зроблено висновок про необхідність виваженої, свідомої і відповідальної політики наукових установ та закладів освіти щодо даних у профілях працівників задля досягнення найвищих результатів.

An Informetric Analysis of Relationship between Open Access Presence and Ranking of African Universities

This study was conducted to determine the relationship between open access presence and ranking of African universities. It adopted descriptive informetric to examine open access presence of African countries using Directory of Open Access Repositories (DOAR) and Research Gate scores (RGs) of the universities. Data was also extracted from the Journal Consortium (an African university ranking organisation) for metrics on African university ranking. Data on African open access presence was correlated with university rankings. Findings reveal that only twenty-four countries in Africa have records in DOAR and Research gate. Four of the countries (South Africa, Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria) contribute more over 85% of open access records in Africa and the same produced 68% of the top 100 universities in Africa. The study found a highly significant positive but moderate correlation between open access presence and ranking of African universities. It concludes that African universities need to review their science policy in line with open access initiative to enhance the visibility and ranking of the university globally.

A Systematic Review of Philippine Research Productivity: A Bourdieusian Perspective

In a neoliberal globalized institution, research productivity (RP) among faculty members has become an important aspect determining university rankings and academic performance. Coping with the demands of RP, many universities aim to improve their faculty’s scholarly academic repertoire through incentivizing research publications and providing research training programs. Drawing from sociological perspectives, this systematic review outlines the factors and consequences of research productivity as a capital in the context of Philippine academics. Based on the review, one glaring issue is the low RP of the country compared to its ASEAN and Western counterparts across both soft and hard sciences. Using Bourdieu’s theory on capital, the constant accumulation of faculty members for RP as capital has resulted in their struggle for legitimization in their professions and overcoming the paradox of national policies and institutional policies. Moreover, the review revealed additional pressure for faculty members to keep up with the demands of national policies requiring scholarly outputs while struggling to handle various institutional practices that can be restrictive towards research works.

Communicative Aspect of University Reputation Assessment (on the Case of RUDN University)

This article is concerned with the communicative study of the issue of assessing the reputation of universities. The article presents the concept of "reputation" and its characteristics such as a long-term period of creation, the multiple nature of reputation, the relationship with the values that the audience gives to the company etc. Reputation is seen as the result of communicative interaction with the audience, which allows to create trust and inspire confidence in stakeholders. The authors review the characteristics of the three leading world university rankings: Times Higher Education World University Rankings; Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings; The Academic Ranking of World Universities. And also, the article describes the criteria by which these rankings are built. It either observes the indicators that are taken into account in the compilation of reputational ratings for companies and brands. It turns out during the comparing of the criteria for assessing the ratings of universities and the ratings of companies and brands, that emotional components are completely dismissed from the ratings of universities. While compilers of the company’s reputation rankings RepTrak ™ Pulse and the brand’s reputation rankings Interbrand always include them. The article presents the data from a study of the reputation of RUDN University, which the authors conducted by methods of survey and interview in November 2019. They show that an emotional assessment of a university's reputation is more important for an internal audience than a rational one.

Novel World University Rankings Combining Academic, Environmental and Resource Indicators

World university rankings are regarded as an important tool to assess higher education quality. There are several media sources that publish world university rankings every year. These ranking results are mainly based on academic indicators, including research and teaching, with different weightings. However, some of these academic indicators are questionable, which affects the objectivity of the ranking results. In addition, conducting more medical-related studies could enhance the research impact scores. Some universities that devote themselves to enhancing these academic indicators lose sight of their original development goals and directions. To make the rankings more comprehensive, it is necessary to consider different viewpoints in the assessment. In other words, the research question of this paper is: whether considering different kinds of indicators can provide better ranking results? Therefore, in this paper, we introduce a novel ranking approach that combines academic, environmental, and resource indicators based on the Borda count method. The top 100 world universities from the Academic Ranking of World Universities, QS World University Rankings, Times Higher Education World Universities, and U.S. News & World Report are chosen for the analysis. The comparisons between the original and new rankings show that many universities improve in the rankings, while some universities from particular countries drop in the rankings due to the scores obtained from the environmental and resource indicators.

Global and national university rankings: A multivariate analysis

Introduction. In the context of globalisation and internationalisation of higher education, university rankings are becoming an important tool for assessing the quality of education received by students at various higher education institutions around the world. These processes actualise the issues of possibilities for practical use of methodologies for calculation of global and national university rankings.The aim of the study was to develop and apply a methodological approach to multivariate the analysis of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) classification procedures, to construct and analyse aggregated indicators for global and national rating systems of higher education organisations, and to assess the relationship between them.Methodology and research methods. The current paper presents a system analysis of databases of rating systems and an aggregation of independent evaluations of global and national rankings of HEIs using the methodology of league table analysis based on mathematical apparatus of the voting theory. The dependence of global and national university rankings indicators was investigated using correlation, cluster, factor, regression (linear and polynomial) and dispersion methods of analysis.Results and scientific novelty. A comprehensive comparative analysis of ranking systems and their results was carried out. The authors solved the problem of aggregating multiple heterogeneous studies of global and national ranking systems with their qualitative and quantitative variety of criteria, indicators and methods of assessment. The correlation between the indicators of aggregated global and national rankings was revealed; the regression dependence of the integral national ranking with the results of the leading global rating systems was determined.Practical significance. The developed methodical approach is a convenient and effective mechanism for comprehensive monitoring of the members of educational process.

Institutional prestige, academic supervision and research productivity of international PhD students: Evidence from Chinese returnees

Since the emergence of global university rankings in the 2000s, East Asian universities have been recruiting academics with doctoral degrees from Western countries to strengthen their competitiveness in the global university league tables. Governments offer scholarships to support students in their overseas doctoral studies and encourage graduates to return. Although much attention is given to researchers with overseas degrees, little is known about their experiences and pre-employment academic productivity. Drawing on a nationwide survey and bibliometric data, this study examines whether and how the institutional prestige of a host university and academic supervision contribute to the academic productivity of government-funded Chinese PhD returnees during their doctoral studies. Results show that supervisors’ research support and collaboration positively affect pre-employment academic productivity. However, a university's prestige does not exert such an influence. Moreover, co-authorship with a supervisor is a crucial mechanism in the influence of supervisors’ research support on PhD students’ productivity.