By Ruth A Pagell* (27 Sep 2023) Ruth’s Ranking 56 Part 1 raised concerns over existing rankings and showed how THE Impact was addressing some of them. Part 2 continues the discussion. QS 2024 World Rankings changed metrics and weightings, causing controversy over changes in countries’ performance. Nature added a new subject, Health Sciences and…
By Ruth A Pagell* (7/27/2023) 20 years ago Shanghai Rankings issued its first global ranking of five hundred universities, followed a year later by a joint venture from THE and QS, of 200 universities. (Praphamontripong). The number of rankings, countries, institutions, and the scope of the indicators has grown along with criticism of the…
By Ruth A. Pagell* (18 May 2023) It is almost a year since I put gender aside, leaving the piece on gender identity to be completed later. During this time while I was reviewing new books, evaluating QS’ new sustainability rankings, and immersing myself in Academic Freedom, there was a shift from SDGs to…
(14 Apr 2023) Ruth Pagell and her colleague Barbie Keiser decided to build on their interest in SDGs to present an in-depth report that highlights ways the scholarly community (publishers, educational institutions, international and regional organizations, and libraries) participates in sustainable development activities The chapter covers: Researching SDGs, including data and their sources Publishers’ and…
By Ruth A. Pagell* (19 Mar 2023) In order to pay my way into the Internet Librarian conference that I described in RR 54, I agreed to write an article about the conference for the Online Searcher section of the Computers In Libraries magazine. Until 2023, Online Searcher had been a stand-alone publication itself, with…
By Ruth A. Pagell (21 Mar 2023) I ended RR 54 Academic Freedom and University rankings by warning readers that academic freedom is fragile. The next day, V-DEM released its 2023 Academic Freedom Index (AFi) which illustrates just how fragile it is. I also learned from QS that AFi is used in one of…
By Ruth A. Pagell* (1 Mar 2023) This was supposed to be a brief update, but academic freedom took on a life of its own. This article is in three parts: Academic freedom with a review of New Threats to Academic Freedom in Asia and indexes measuring freedoms, with Appendix A. Updates to U.S. News…
By Ruth A. Pagell* (13 Jan 2023) “Sustainable development can only be achieved when there is economic, social, environmental and cultural balance” derived from Buddhist philosophy expressed by the previous King Rama IX, at the foundation of the National Institute of Development Administration (Seneviratne). As I was preparing my end-of-year report, which was to…
By Ruth A. Pagell* (28 Nov 2022) “The research that universities conduct plays a significant role in solving the greatest challenges facing the climate and our societies. As institutions, they also play a significant role in educating future generations and as well as being resource consuming organisations themselves. It is important to consider all…
By Ruth A. Pagell* (6 Oct 2022) Generations ago, when I was in college, I took Russian as my language requirement. In 1979, I had the opportunity to travel to Russia, then known as the Soviet Union with Kiev and Minsk as Russian cities. My college Russian was just good enough to get us to…