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1. Why are we doing the ranking?
Our
original purpose of doing the ranking was to find out the gap
between Chinese universities and world-class universities, particularly
in terms of academic or research performance. It has been done
for our academic interests without any outside support.
Upon the request of colleagues and friends from various countries,
we published the ranking on our website and update it annually.
We hope our Academic Ranking of World Universities will help you
to compare and identify universities worldwide by their academic
or research performance.
2. How many universities have we ranked?
We
have scanned every university that has any Nobel Laureates, Fields
Medals, Highly Cited Researchers, or papers published in Nature
or Science. In addition, we scanned major universities of every
country with significant amount of articles indexed in major citation
indices. In total, we have scanned more than two thousand universities.
Although we publish only the top 500 universities, we have actually
ranked more than one thousand universities. We regret that we
will not be able to provide you with information on the ranking
of universities beyond the top 500.
3. Is our academic ranking objective?
The
quality of universities cannot be precisely measured by mere numbers.
Therefore, any ranking is controversial and no ranking is absolutely
objective. People should be cautious about any ranking including
our Academic Ranking of World Universities.
It would be impossible to have a comprehensive ranking of universities
worldwide, because of the huge differences of universities in
the large variety of countries and the technical difficulties
in obtaining internationally comparable data. Our ranking is using
carefully selected indicators and internationally comparable data
that everyone could check.
4. Are there any problems with the ranking?
There
are many methodological and technical problems. Methodological
problems include: the proportion of indicators on teaching and
services, the weight of per capita performance, the type of institutions
(comprehensive or specialized), the language bias in publications,
the selection of awards and the experience of award winners. Technical
problems include: the definition of institutions, the attribution
of publications and awards, and the history of institutions.
For more detailed discussions, please read our paper "Academic ranking of world
universities - methodologies and problems", which is
a paper presented at the meeting of International
Ranking Expert Group and subsequently published in Vol. 30,
No 2., 2005 of "Higher Education in Europe".
5. What are the major changes in 2007?
No
major changes have been made.
6. What are we planning to do in 2008?
We
will listen to your opinions carefully and update our ranking
in August 2007 again. Your comments and suggestions will be very
much appreciated!
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