- What university founded in 1257 is among the world’s top young universities? (Table 1 in the Appendix has the answer.)
- What Thai company appears in green and patent rankings?
- What higher education center offers relevant free webinars?
By Ruth A. Pagell*
I spent the beginning of 2022 away from rankings, doing research with a friend on SDGs, and working on a book review on rankings for the next Ruth’s Rankings article. When THE announced its new young university rankings I took a short break to see if anything was new. At the same time, Clarivate announced an innovation ranking for South and Southeast Asia using patent data that adds another dimension to Ruth’s Rankings 48 on green metrics. While researching background material for the book review for the “Research Handbook on University Rankings,” I discovered an upcoming webinar by three of the chapter authors that looked interesting and is an enhancement to RR 32 on the Business of Rankings.
YOUNG UNIVERSITIES
I had not planned on focusing on any Times Higher Education update in 2022. However, given Nature Index’s story in my January update on the dominance of China in its Young University rankings, I checked to see what story THE is telling. THE’s story emphasizes the rise of French universities, based on the consolidation of older universities, and the growth in the number of universities from India, Turkey, and Iran. It also highlights the rise in the number of African universities, where 67% of all the continent’s universities in World Rankings are young. At the other end of the spectrum, only five percent of North American universities are on the young list.
The two rankings differ in the number of universities included, methodology, and founding date. Nature index 2021 Young Universities has 150 universities. The methodology is one-dimensional, measuring research output from a select set of scientific journals. THE uses the same set of universities and metrics as in its world and regional rankings, but with different weightings. Click here for THE methodology.
THE increased the latest young dataset by including reporter universities, those that want to be ranked but do not meet all the criteria. THE lists 790 young universities of which 539 are ranked. The top 200 have individual ranks, and the 251 at the bottom are unranked reporters. The two rankers use different “founding dates.” Are they the original medieval dates or the current reorganization dates? In the first young university rankings in 2012, four French universities were in the top 100. Today there are five in the top 20 and 12 in the top 100. See the Appendix for Table 1 for the top 20 young universities for THE and Nature and their founding dates and see Table 2 for distribution by country.
As THE keeps adding more universities the number of young universities will grow as will the number from under-represented countries.
TABLE 3: Countries with the leading numbers of THE Young universities. China is included for comparison.
| THE | THE Ranked | THE | Nature Young | |
| Number | Total 790 | 539 | Top 150 | 150 |
| China | 11 | 11 | 2 | 59 |
| India | 54 | 40 | 6 | 13 |
| Turkey | 52 | 40 | 3 | 0 |
| Iran | 41 | 34 | 7 | 0 |
| United Kingdom | 58 | 37 | 12 | 0 |
THE Young 2022: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2022/young-university-rankings#!/page/0/
Nature Young 2021: https://www.natureindex.com/supplements/nature-index-2021-young-universities/tables/overall
CLARIVATE 2021 Innovation in South and Southeast Asia
In February 2022, Clarivate released a report on innovation in South and Southeast Asian academic, government, and corporate organizations, using its Derwent Patent and Patent Citation Indexes (Dhar). The study includes 276 innovators from eight countries. 58% of the organizations are academic or government. India dominates the rankings with 61% of all listings.
The methodology includes four indicators derived from the Derwent data:
- Volume: The number of inventions (patent families) filed by an organization during a set period, including organizations with over 20 filings between 2015 to 2019.
- Influence: Measured by the number of citations for the patents.
- Success: At least one granted patent within each family (1- see definition of granted patent below).
- Globalization: Patent filed in more than one country.
Indicators are not weighted, and organizations are not ranked but listed alphabetically.
The report identifies three drivers. The first is mission-based ecosystems, with multi-stakeholder collaboration. The second is sustainability, where innovative organizations will provide alternate and better solutions which will allow them to “transform themselves from the inside out with sustainability.” The third is Short-scale, well-defined, measurable, and big vision projects, integrated into the core of their businesses.
Organizations with patents that support sustainability in the automotive, steel, and wastewater industries are highlighted. There is little overlap between Clarivate’s innovators and the green universities and companies identified in RR 48 Parts 1 and 2. Click here to fill out a form to download the report. See Table 4 below for the top in each category for each country.
Based on location, Brunei Darussalam is eligible for inclusion but does not have any organizations that meet the criteria.
For a definition of “granted patent” click here: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/patent.asp
A sovereign authority, the United States for example, grants the inventor exclusive rights to the patented process, design, or invention for a certain period in exchange for a complete disclosure of the invention.
BUSINESS OF RANKINGS
In 2017, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology invited me to give a talk about rankings as part of their Scholar’s program. I had their permission to do a somewhat similar talk in Singapore. In both sessions, I was asked about rankings as a business. As a former business librarian with an MBA, I was embarrassed that I had never even thought about the topic. As a researcher, I set out to find more about our rankings organizations, resulting in Ruth’s Rankings 32.
While I am writing this, I am also in the middle of reviewing Hazelkorn and Mihut’s Research Handbook on University Rankings, which has three chapters on rankings as a business. The book is not open access nor can it be accessed by individual chapters. In looking for some alternatives, I discovered an upcoming webinar. Hazelkorn is moderating a Centre for Global Higher Education seminar, “The business of ranking, publishing and data analytics,” to be presented by two authors in the Handbook, Leslie Chan and George Chen on 21 April, UK time. Even though this is not a convenient time for many of us, sign up for this webinar and register to get on CGHE’s mailing list since they have many interesting seminars and past webinars are available.
CONCLUSION
The three updates in this article are seemingly unrelated. Yet they increase our understanding of the changing landscape and priorities facing the ranked and the rankers. The rise of a growing number of African universities should not be seen as a threat to those of us in countries with mature educational systems but as part of the massification of higher education. The growth of China should be a sign for mature educational systems to reexamine the support they are providing higher education. Patents add another dimension to universities’ purpose and their interaction with industry. Understanding the business models of the different rankers improves our ability to evaluate the rankings’ biases if any.
RESOURCES
This update references the following Ruth’s Rankings:
RR 32 (22 Jan 2018). The business of rankings, https://librarylearningspace.com/ruths-rankings-32-business-rankings-show-money/
RR 48 Part 1 (20 November 2021) How green is my university?… https://librarylearningspace.com/ruths-rankings-48-part-1-how-green-is-my-university-ranking-green-universities-new-metrics-and-new-leaders/ and Part 2 (31 Dec 2021) Country and company environmental rankings… https://librarylearningspace.com/ruths-rankings-48-part-2-country-and-company-environmental-rankings-add-new-sets-of-indicators-to-our-vocabulary/
News Update (25 Jan 2022). December 2021 & January 2022 https://librarylearningspace.com/ruths-ranking-news-update-december-2021-january-2022/
Cited publications
Chan, L., Chen, G., and Hazelkorn, E. (forthcoming, 21 April 2022). The business of rankings, publishing, and data analytics. Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), Oxford UK. https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/the-business-of-ranking-publishing-and-data-analytics/
Dhar, R. (10 Feb 2022). 2021 innovation in South and Southeast Asia [Report]. Clarivate blog. https://clarivate.com/blog/2021-innovation-in-south-and-southeast-asia-report/
Ellis, R (15 Feb 2022). Young University Rankings 2022: results announced: French institution tops table for the first time as country’s consolidation strategy appears to pay off. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/young-university-rankings-2022-results-announced (registration required)
Ruth’s Rankings
A list of Ruth’s Rankings and News Updates is here.
*Ruth A. Pagell is emeritus faculty librarian at Emory University. After working at Emory, she was the founding librarian of the Li Ka Shing Library at Singapore Management University and then adjunct faculty [teaching] in the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawaii. She has written and spoken extensively on various aspects of librarianship, including contributing articles to ACCESS – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3238-9674
