by ANGEL CALDERON
It has been a busy period lately on the global rankings front. In early June, QS released its 2023 World University Rankings education, followed by the 2022 Nature Index.
Last week, the RUR Round University Ranking Agency quietly released its 2022 World University Rankings. Then, the European-centric and multi-dimensional U-Multirank released its humongous rankings in which users can compare performance for more than 2 200 institutions worldwide.
The CWTS Leiden Ranking also came out on June 22, which includes 1,318 universities, up by 93 from 1,225 in 2021. This ranking has been published annually since 2008 by the Centre for Science and Technology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. It derives a set of impact and collaboration measures, but it does not produce an overall rank.
Focus on Leiden: To improve in key areas
In this commentary, I mainly focus on the performance of Australian universities in the Leiden Ranking and I highlight some areas of concern for our universities, which if addressed are likely to bear favourably in coming years. Later in the week I will cover the other rankings.
Since 2019, the Leiden Ranking has included a set of measures on open access (OA) and gender diversity. The inclusion of these measures has brought into focus the gulf in performance between universities which do well in the impact and collaboration measures (i.e. the most research intensive universities), versus the universities which do well in the OA and gender diversity measures.
University leaders ought to pay closer attention at the performance of our universities in the OA and gender diversity measures, as there is significant room for improvement which will also drive improvement across other ranking schemas.
What Leiden reveals
Read my commentary on the performance of our universities in 2021 (CMM, 3 June 2021) and 2020 (CMM, 9 July 2020). Both commentaries briefly cover some of the methodological nuances of this ranking.
Marching on
There is no doubt that Australian universities continue to march on the global stage but we do not see stellar performance. The Leiden Ranking now includes 34 universities, with the inclusion of Central Queensland University and the University of Southern Queensland, compared to 32 in 2021 or 26 in 2019.
Australia is twelfth in the number of universities included in the ranking, behind Brazil with 35. China remains with the largest number of institutions (247 compared to 221 in 2021 or 204 in 2020). The United States remain second with 202 institutions and is followed by the United Kingdom with 65.
To put these numbers in perspective, Australia as a national system stands out in Leiden in overall representation. 79 per cent of Australian universities are included compared to 72 per cent for the Netherlands, 51 per cent for Germany, 45 per cent for the United Kingdom, 9 per cent for China, and 8 per cent for the United States.
Selected impact measures
The 2022 edition covers Web of Science indexed outputs published in the period between 2017 and the pandemic year of 2020, whilst citations are counted until the end of 2021.
In a nutshell, Australian universities do not appear to have suffered considerably in research endeavours because of the disruption caused by the first year of the pandemic.
Out of the 13 measures on impact, let us consider three: Publications, mean normalized citation score (MNCS) and the proportion of publications in top 1 per cent.
In Publications, five Australian universities are included in the top 100 (Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland, Monash and UNSW). These institutions have ranked in the world’s top 100 for the past five years. In total, there are 17 universities included in the world’s top 400, unchanged compared to last year but three higher compared to five years ago. Ten institutions moved up in rank compared to last year, 23 moved down and one retained the same spot (Melbourne at 29th).
In the Mean Normalised Citation score category , four Australian universities are included in the top 100 (Southern Queensland, Australian Catholic University, Swinburne and University of Technology Sydney). On this measure, Go8 institutions mostly rank in the 101-200 range. In total there 16 institutions included in the world’s top 200 and 26 in the world’s top 400. These numbers tell us that the outputs from our researchers tend to be cited by peers globally.
In the MNCS, 22 Australian universities moved up in rank compared to last year and 12 moved down. On this measure, Southern Queensland is a clear stand out, as it moved up from outside the world’s 500 five years ago to 42nd this year. Australian Catholic University and Swinburne have also moved up from the world’s top 300 to 48th and 54th, respectively.
In the proportion of publications in the top 1 per cent, six Australian universities are included in the world’s top 100, two more compared to last year. These include Southern Queensland, Swinburne, University of Technology Sydney, Australian Catholic University, RMIT, and Queensland. Southern Queensland, with 24 publications in the top 1 per cent out of 879 publications, ranks 8th globally on this measure. Southern Queensland is ahead of the University of California – Berkeley with 267 publications in the top 1 per cent out of 9789 publications which ranks 9th globally. In total 28 Australian universities are included in the world’s top 400. It is worth noting that in the number of publications in the top 1 per cent, Go8 and ATN institutions tend to outperform all other Australian peers.
Collaboration measures Out of these measures, let us consider the following: number and proportion of collaborative publications, number and proportion of international collaborations, and proportion of industry collaborations.
Australian universities continue to underperform in several of the collaboration measures, particularly in publications co-authored with industry organisations. A sustained effort at increasing exponentially the volume of academia-industry collaborations ought to be a key strategic priority for our university leaders.
In the number of Collaborative Publications, five Australian universities are included in the world’s top 100: Melbourne, Monash, Sydney, Queensland, and UNSW. These institutions have ranked in the top 100 for at least the past five years. Over the past five years the number of Australian universities which rank in the world’s top 400 have increased from 15 to 19. Compared to last year, 13 Australian institutions moved up in position, 19 moved down whilst two remained unchanged in position.
In the proportion of Collaborative Publications, four Australian universities rank in the world’s top 100: Australian Catholic University, Edith Cowan, Western Australia, and Southern Queensland. Over the past five years, the number of Australian universities in the world’s top 400 increased from 20 to 29 this year, noting that Southern Queensland moved up from outside the top 800 in 2018 to 79th globally this year.
In the proportion of International Collaborations, two Australian universities are included in the world’s top 100 – University of Technology Sydney and Southern Queensland) – whilst another five are included in the 101-200 range – Australian National University, Swinburne, Curtin, Wollongong, and Western Australia. Over the past five years, the number of Australian universities in the world’s top 400 increased from 21 to 27 this year. Compared to last year, 33 institutions moved up in position and one moved down.
In the proportion of publications co-authored with industry, there is only one Australian university which is ranked in the world’s top 400. Murdoch ranks 344th and has been Australia’s highest ranked for the past five years. Compared to last year, 13 Australian universities moved up and 21 moved down.
Areas for improvement
For Australian universities to remain competitive on this ranking (and all others, really), there are three clear areas for improvement:
* increasing collaborative efforts with industry partners (as noted above)
* increasing opportunities for making publications openly available, and
* bolstering opportunities and incentives for women to publish.
Open access
The underpinning idea of having researchers’ articles openly available is to maximise research impact. Since most of the research undertaken in public universities is paid for by taxpayers through governments, there is a benefit to society for it to be shared widely at no cost to the user.
Queensland University of Technology is Australia’s highest ranked institution in the proportion of open access (OA) publications at 253rd, then Melbourne at 268th.
65.7 per cent of Queensland University of Technology’s publications are OA compared to 65.2 per for Melbourne. Five out of the 34 Australian universities have a proportion of OA which is equal to or greater than 60 per cent.
For context, institutions which rank highest on these measures are from the United Kingdom and all of them have a proportion of OA publications which exceeds 60 per cent. Further afield, 60 per cent of the 441 European universities included in the ranking have a proportion of OA publications which is equal to or greater than 60 per cent.
Women authors
Although the proportion of women in academic roles in Australian universities has increased from 38 per cent in 2001 to 48 per cent in 2021 (CMM, 20 February 2021), the results of the proportion of women’s authorship of publications as reflected in the Leiden Ranking suggest there is a long way to go for parity to be achieved.
There are only three Australian universities which rank in the world’s top 100 in the proportion of women authors: La Trobe and Australian Catholic University both ranks 36th and 37th respectively, followed by Central Queensland which ranks 76th globally.
Both La Trobe and Australian Catholic University have 48.1 per cent women authors, whilst Central Queensland has a 44.9 per cent. It is worth noting that these institutions perform well on the United Nation’s Social Development Goal Five (achieve gender equality) in the 2022 THE Impact Ranking: La Trobe ranks 9th globally and the other two rank in the 101-200 band.
Of the 1,318 ranked institution by Leiden, only 21 have a proportion that is equal to or greater than 50 percent. These 21 institutions are drawn from Poland (10), Lithuania, Serbia, Romania (2), Brazil (3), Portugal, Argentina (2), and Austria.
Overall, 184 institutions have a proportion that is equal to or greater than 40 percent. Of the 34 ranked Australian universities, only eight attained this threshold.
As I recently observed, the key to improving the proportion of women in academic leadership positions (and therefore their research output) is for universities to make concerted efforts in removing barriers which lead women to leave academia. Universities also need to create cultures where women can thrive and are offered continuing academic positions (CMM, 20 February and UWN, 5 March).
Angel Calderon is principal advisor, planning and research at RMIT