By Ruth A Pagell* (21 Apr 2025) Living in the United States and writing about higher education has been challenging so far this year. I keep getting distracted from my topic for the month—which is reputation—by all of the other news read and heard every day. It makes university rankings seem trivial. Times Higher Education…
By Ruth A Pagell* (2 Jan 2025) Many decades ago, when I began working in academia, before global rankings, researchers were expected to write articles on their own. Today’s articles may be written by one author or a hundred authors, in the same or different departments, universities, or anywhere in the world, with or…
(30 Dec 2024) At LibraryLearningSpace.com, we are dedicated to sharing what’s happening in the library and academic publishing world by curating news from across the globe. Looking back at 2024, the most viewed and frequently published topics were artificial intelligence (AI), research integrity, and our column of Ruth’s Rankings. AI’s Growing Role in Research …
By Ruth A Pagell* (26 Nov 2024) When the new Singapore Management University hired me as its first University Librarian, I tried to draft a strategic plan before officially starting work. I always had data for US libraries, such as detailed library acquisition data found in the Library and Book Trade Almanac (Bayer;…
By Ruth A Pagell* (30 Sep 2024) Several rankings were released while I relived the past, writing RR 60. Changes include: Webometrics adding ROR (Research Organizations Registry) identity records to thousands of institutions and revising its university citation rankings SIR (Scimago Institutions Rankings) adding three new metrics to its Societal Factors US News Global modifying…
By Ruth A Pagell* (30 Jul 2024) The first part of my retrospective (RR60) is personal. It focuses on the broader picture of university rankings, their role in higher education, and the current criticisms of their shortcomings. This Addendum examines the data. It tracks the first two world rankings, the Academic Ranking of World…
By Ruth A Pagell* (29 Jul 2024) Ruth’s Rankings started in the middle of the current history of world university rankings. This is the story of how I became a player in the rankings game and the concerns I have about the future. I have tried to be a reporter rather than a critic,…
By Ruth A Pagell* (27 Mar 2024) I spent two months away from Ruth’s Rankings collaborating with a friend on a book chapter on open access that ended up being about open everything. During that time, CWTS Leiden started the new year with a new version of its rankings, using the new hot bibliometric…
By Ruth A Pagell* (December 18, 2023) Question: What is the best sustainability ranking? Question: Who is the most “sustainable” university I looked forward to the second edition of QS’ Sustainability rankings. It was well-timed, during the meeting of COPE-28. I was so anxious to learn as much as I could before…
By Ruth A Pagell * (27 Nov 2023) Question: Do regional rankings address some of the concerns about the current world rankings? It is fashionable to criticize the rankings (Brink). My last set of articles, Ruth’s Ranking 56 parts 1 and 2 and RR 57, focused on changes in metrics and weightings from our…