Introducing rating systems
Universities and scientific institutions are always facing a challenging and fiercely competitive environment at the national and international level. This competition has created a new system of university evaluation, which is known as university ranking; Ranking means knowing the position of an institution compared to other institutions based on the measurement of a combination of criteria and indicators, which finally provides a list of the names of universities and institutions in a ranked form. Today, the ranking of universities and higher education institutions is considered an integral part of higher education systems, because only with the purposeful, structured and accurate monitoring of their performance, continuous quality improvement can be achieved; Therefore, it is possible to rank these institutions by carefully and comprehensively designing performance indicators, and by creating a competitive environment, it is possible to facilitate rapid progress and the achievement of higher education goals. Getting to know the ranking systems and their indicators is one of the inevitable requirements of developing the strategic transformation plan of the university. The ranking of universities is based on various criteria such as research criteria, educational criteria, international reputation, facilities and facilities, etc., and each criterion has certain indicators. Universities that are placed in different ranking systems have the characteristics and indicators necessary for the growth and development of the country. Therefore, in some universities of the world, these rankings are used for quality evaluations. Some of the important systems are as follows:
• ARWU Shanghai University Rankings
Academic ranking system of world universities or Shanghai is one of the most reliable global ranking systems, the results of which are published by Shanghai University of China. This ranking was published in the form of a large project in China for the first time in 2003 by Shanghai University and is updated annually. Also, the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) Shanghai was also published with a new methodology for the first time in 2017.
In the Shanghai subject ranking, universities are ranked in 54 different scientific subjects in the form of 5 main fields (natural sciences, engineering, biological sciences, medical sciences and social sciences) and based on 5 indicators: research output (number of publications in first quarter journals), research impact (references), international cooperation, research quality and international scientific awards are evaluated. Shanghai uses Web of Science and InCites as information collection sources. And based on the evaluation approach of this ranking system, universities whose number of publications in each scientific field exceeds a certain limit will be included in the subject ranking list.
• QS university ranking
QS global university ranking, abbreviated as QS, is another prestigious university evaluation system that is published every year by Cockerley Symonds' list of the world's top universities. Since 2004, the QS ranking annually presents the world's universities using six evaluation indicators and the top 1000 universities. The information needed for this ranking system is collected through a survey of experts in the subject area, a survey of employers, the Scopus citation database, and a questionnaire filled by the universities themselves.
The evaluation indicators of this rating system are as follows:
1- University credibility: a qualitative index based on the opinion of experts, which has been allocated the most points. Subject area experts are surveyed in connection with the credibility of universities in the subject field of their expertise (weight 40%).
2- Credibility of working people: the opinion of employers about the work quality of graduates of each university is examined (10% weight).
3- The ratio of faculty members to students: This index evaluates the quality of education in universities and the amount of time each faculty member devotes to a student (20 percent weight).
4- Citation rate for each faculty member: The purpose of this index is to examine the research impact of universities. The information related to the citations received in the last five years of each university is extracted from the Scopus citation database and in order to evaluate the universities fairly, instead of the citations of the entire university, citations are calculated per faculty member. (20% weight).
5- The number of international faculty members and the number of international students: the purpose of these two indicators is to evaluate the success rate of a university in attracting international students and faculty members (10% weight).
• Times Higher Education university ranking
- The Times ranking system is one of the most reliable international systems in the field of evaluating and ranking universities in the world. For the first time in 2004, the Times database published the list of the world's top universities in cooperation with the QS database, and with the completion of the cooperation between these two databases, the Times started evaluating scientific centres independently from 2010. In addition to the ranking of universities at the global and regional level, Times database also publishes the list of top young and influential universities in order to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
In the Times ranking, the evaluation of world universities is based on 13 indicators in the form of the following 5 criteria:
• Education with a weight of 30% (educational credit 15%, professor-student ratio 4.5%, ratio of doctoral students to bachelor's students 2.25%, ratio of faculty members with doctoral degrees to the total 6% and income 2.25%)
• Research with a weight of 30% (research credit 18%, income from research 6% and the number of articles indexed in the Scopus citation database per faculty member 6%)
Citations with a weight of 30% (research impact, average number of citations per indexed articles in the last 5 years)
• International image with a weight of 7.5% (the ratio of international students to domestic students 2.5%, the ratio of international to domestic faculty members 2.5% and the share of published articles with international co-authors 2.5%)
• Income from industry with a weight of 2.5% (transfer of knowledge and amount of income from industry per faculty member)
• In the Times impact ranking (THE University Impact Ranking), the effectiveness of universities is measured based on their activities in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) based on 4 indicators of research, management, development and education. Sustainable development goals include 17 items: 1- Absence of poverty 2- Absence of hunger 3- Health and welfare 4- Quality of education 5- Gender equality 6- Clean water 7- Affordable and clean energy 8- Proper employment and economic growth 9- Industry , innovation and infrastructure 10- Inequality reduction 11- Sustainable cities and societies 12- Responsible production and consumption 13- Performance regarding climate control 14- Life under water 15- Life on land 16- Peace, justice and power 17- Participation in the realization of goals It is development.
• Leiden University Ranking
The Centre for Science and Technology Studies of Leiden University, CWTS, the Netherlands, started ranking scientific institutions by presenting new indicators in 2007. The Leiden ranking system ranks universities around the world in the form of four general criteria: 1- Scientific impact including the total number of publications, top 50% articles, top 10% articles, top 5% articles and top 1% articles in the form of number and share of the total, total and the average number of citations of university publications, as well as the total and average number of normalized citations (by discipline and year) of the university, 2- Scientific collaborations including the total number of publications, scientific collaboration, international collaboration, industrial collaboration, scientific collaboration with a geographical distance of less than 100 km and It evaluates scientific cooperation with a geographical distance of more than 5000 km (in terms of number and share of the total), 3- free access to publications and 4- gender diversity of authors. This evaluation is based on the indexed scientific productions of universities in the Web of Science database during the last 4 years, and the necessary condition to be included in the initial evaluation list is the publication of at least 800 net articles (including articles from collaboration with other scientific institutions in the form of percentage).
• U.S. News University Rankings. News
Since 2015, the US News International Ranking Institute has evaluated and ranked universities and research institutes around the world. The ranking indicators of this institution include the global reputation of research, the regional reputation of research based on the last 5 years of data obtained from Clarivit Analytics, the number of articles in prestigious journals, books and conference articles in the last 5 years, normalized citation impact, total citations, number of publications among 10 The percentage of highly cited publications is the total percentage of publications among the top 10% of highly cited publications, international collaborations, the total percentage of researches with international collaboration, the number of highly cited researches among the top 1% of researches and the percentage of the most cited publications.
• Webometrics University Ranking
• Webometric ranking is done by the Spanish Cybermetrics Laboratory and includes the databases of fifteen thousand universities and about 5 thousand research centres. This centre ranks the universities of the world based on the index of presence in the virtual world (web). The Web Ranking (or Webometric Ranking) is published twice a year since 2004 (data is collected in the first weeks of January and July and the results are published at the end of the two months) and more than 30,000 higher education institutions. Worldwide coverage.
In this ranking system, the volume of information published by a university on its website, the accessibility of website information, the number of published articles and the amount of references to articles are considered as main indicators. The purpose of this ranking is to check the impact of the university on the web and its commitment to the virtual world. In this way, the attention of universities to internet publication is effective in increasing their rank in this type of ranking.
• GreenMetric University Ranking
• GreenMetric global university ranking (UI GreenMetric) was formed in 2010 by the initiative of the University of Indonesia with the aim of promoting sustainability in higher education. In this ranking system, universities around the world are ranked based on their commitment and actions in line with sustainability issues. Greenmetric of six criteria: environment and infrastructure (15%), energy and climate change (21%), waste management (18%), water (10%), transportation (18%) and education (18%). It is used to evaluate and rank higher education centres.
• HEEACT Academic Ranking
• CWUR University Rankings
• SCImago Institutions Rankings
• SCImago Journal and Country Rank - SCImago Journal and Country Rank
• University Ranking by Academic Performance URAP - University Ranking by Academic Performance
• ISC World University Rankings
• ISC ranking of universities in the Islamic world
• Web ranking of 4ICU universities
• ISC ranking of Iranian universities
Academic ranking system of world universities or Shanghai is one of the most reliable global ranking systems, the results of which are published by Shanghai University of China. This ranking was published in the form of a large project in China for the first time in 2003 by Shanghai University and is updated annually. Also, the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) Shanghai was also published with a new methodology for the first time in 2017.
In the Shanghai subject ranking, universities are ranked in 54 different scientific subjects in the form of 5 main fields (natural sciences, engineering, biological sciences, medical sciences and social sciences) and based on 5 indicators: research output (number of publications in first quarter journals), research impact (references), international cooperation, research quality and international scientific awards are evaluated. Shanghai uses Web of Science and InCites as information collection sources. And based on the evaluation approach of this ranking system, universities whose number of publications in each scientific field exceeds a certain limit will be included in the subject ranking list.
• QS university ranking
QS global university ranking, abbreviated as QS, is another prestigious university evaluation system that is published every year by Cockerley Symonds' list of the world's top universities. Since 2004, the QS ranking annually presents the world's universities using six evaluation indicators and the top 1000 universities. The information needed for this ranking system is collected through a survey of experts in the subject area, a survey of employers, the Scopus citation database, and a questionnaire filled by the universities themselves.
The evaluation indicators of this rating system are as follows:
1- University credibility: a qualitative index based on the opinion of experts, which has been allocated the most points. Subject area experts are surveyed in connection with the credibility of universities in the subject field of their expertise (weight 40%).
2- Credibility of working people: the opinion of employers about the work quality of graduates of each university is examined (10% weight).
3- The ratio of faculty members to students: This index evaluates the quality of education in universities and the amount of time each faculty member devotes to a student (20 percent weight).
4- Citation rate for each faculty member: The purpose of this index is to examine the research impact of universities. The information related to the citations received in the last five years of each university is extracted from the Scopus citation database and in order to evaluate the universities fairly, instead of the citations of the entire university, citations are calculated per faculty member. (20% weight).
5- The number of international faculty members and the number of international students: the purpose of these two indicators is to evaluate the success rate of a university in attracting international students and faculty members (10% weight).
• Times Higher Education university ranking
- The Times ranking system is one of the most reliable international systems in the field of evaluating and ranking universities in the world. For the first time in 2004, the Times database published the list of the world's top universities in cooperation with the QS database, and with the completion of the cooperation between these two databases, the Times started evaluating scientific centres independently from 2010. In addition to the ranking of universities at the global and regional level, Times database also publishes the list of top young and influential universities in order to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
In the Times ranking, the evaluation of world universities is based on 13 indicators in the form of the following 5 criteria:
• Education with a weight of 30% (educational credit 15%, professor-student ratio 4.5%, ratio of doctoral students to bachelor's students 2.25%, ratio of faculty members with doctoral degrees to the total 6% and income 2.25%)
• Research with a weight of 30% (research credit 18%, income from research 6% and the number of articles indexed in the Scopus citation database per faculty member 6%)
Citations with a weight of 30% (research impact, average number of citations per indexed articles in the last 5 years)
• International image with a weight of 7.5% (the ratio of international students to domestic students 2.5%, the ratio of international to domestic faculty members 2.5% and the share of published articles with international co-authors 2.5%)
• Income from industry with a weight of 2.5% (transfer of knowledge and amount of income from industry per faculty member)
• In the Times impact ranking (THE University Impact Ranking), the effectiveness of universities is measured based on their activities in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) based on 4 indicators of research, management, development and education. Sustainable development goals include 17 items: 1- Absence of poverty 2- Absence of hunger 3- Health and welfare 4- Quality of education 5- Gender equality 6- Clean water 7- Affordable and clean energy 8- Proper employment and economic growth 9- Industry , innovation and infrastructure 10- Inequality reduction 11- Sustainable cities and societies 12- Responsible production and consumption 13- Performance regarding climate control 14- Life under water 15- Life on land 16- Peace, justice and power 17- Participation in the realization of goals It is development.
• Leiden University Ranking
The Centre for Science and Technology Studies of Leiden University, CWTS, the Netherlands, started ranking scientific institutions by presenting new indicators in 2007. The Leiden ranking system ranks universities around the world in the form of four general criteria: 1- Scientific impact including the total number of publications, top 50% articles, top 10% articles, top 5% articles and top 1% articles in the form of number and share of the total, total and the average number of citations of university publications, as well as the total and average number of normalized citations (by discipline and year) of the university, 2- Scientific collaborations including the total number of publications, scientific collaboration, international collaboration, industrial collaboration, scientific collaboration with a geographical distance of less than 100 km and It evaluates scientific cooperation with a geographical distance of more than 5000 km (in terms of number and share of the total), 3- free access to publications and 4- gender diversity of authors. This evaluation is based on the indexed scientific productions of universities in the Web of Science database during the last 4 years, and the necessary condition to be included in the initial evaluation list is the publication of at least 800 net articles (including articles from collaboration with other scientific institutions in the form of percentage).
• U.S. News University Rankings. News
Since 2015, the US News International Ranking Institute has evaluated and ranked universities and research institutes around the world. The ranking indicators of this institution include the global reputation of research, the regional reputation of research based on the last 5 years of data obtained from Clarivit Analytics, the number of articles in prestigious journals, books and conference articles in the last 5 years, normalized citation impact, total citations, number of publications among 10 The percentage of highly cited publications is the total percentage of publications among the top 10% of highly cited publications, international collaborations, the total percentage of researches with international collaboration, the number of highly cited researches among the top 1% of researches and the percentage of the most cited publications.
• Webometrics University Ranking
• Webometric ranking is done by the Spanish Cybermetrics Laboratory and includes the databases of fifteen thousand universities and about 5 thousand research centres. This centre ranks the universities of the world based on the index of presence in the virtual world (web). The Web Ranking (or Webometric Ranking) is published twice a year since 2004 (data is collected in the first weeks of January and July and the results are published at the end of the two months) and more than 30,000 higher education institutions. Worldwide coverage.
In this ranking system, the volume of information published by a university on its website, the accessibility of website information, the number of published articles and the amount of references to articles are considered as main indicators. The purpose of this ranking is to check the impact of the university on the web and its commitment to the virtual world. In this way, the attention of universities to internet publication is effective in increasing their rank in this type of ranking.
• GreenMetric University Ranking
• GreenMetric global university ranking (UI GreenMetric) was formed in 2010 by the initiative of the University of Indonesia with the aim of promoting sustainability in higher education. In this ranking system, universities around the world are ranked based on their commitment and actions in line with sustainability issues. Greenmetric of six criteria: environment and infrastructure (15%), energy and climate change (21%), waste management (18%), water (10%), transportation (18%) and education (18%). It is used to evaluate and rank higher education centres.
• HEEACT Academic Ranking
• CWUR University Rankings
• SCImago Institutions Rankings
• SCImago Journal and Country Rank - SCImago Journal and Country Rank
• University Ranking by Academic Performance URAP - University Ranking by Academic Performance
• ISC World University Rankings
• ISC ranking of universities in the Islamic world
• Web ranking of 4ICU universities
• ISC ranking of Iranian universities
