Whatever the methodology the same unis are on top

With universities turning up the spin cycle on their ARWU ranking results (CMM Friday), Isidro F Aguillo from Spanish research agency, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas took the opportunity to remind us of the July results for Australia in the CSIC’s Ranking Web of Universities.

Some purists dismiss the RWU, which is based on volume and impact of www on-line content, but then again, they also don’t like rankings based on surveys. Which leaves us with the course-based U-Multirank (which is hard to use and isn’t a ranking) and the Leiden U research- ranking (which is hard to understand).

But whatever the methodology, results are generally much the same, certainly at the sharp end, which may be Mr Aguillo’s point.

In his ranking, there are seven Australian universities in the global first 100, as there are in the new ARWU . The only difference is that Uni Adelaide makes the RWU cut with UWA missing out, which is the reverse of the ARWU.

And the spread of the super seven is similar on both. Uni Melb is 46^th in the world in the RWU list (41 in ARWU), Uni Queensland is 54^thn on both. There’s a relatively big difference for UNSW, at 55^th for RWU and 94^th for ARWU.  Uni Sydney is 68^th on the RWU and =80^th on the ARWU. ANU is 71^st and 76^th, Monash is 79th and 73^rd on the ARWU. Results between the two rankings for the last top 100 spot are reversed. Uni Adelaide is 100^th on the Spanish ranking and in the 101-150 band of the ARWU while UWA, which is 99th on the ARWU is 166^th on the RWU.