by ANGEL CALDERON

The 2022 rankings season is about to start in earnest, and there will be plenty happening between now and late October. In this commentary I will focus on the major ranking schemas (out of 15) and the outlook for Australian universities.

QS Rankings by Subject

QS Rankings by Subject are coming out on April 6. More than 1500 institutions are ranked in 51 subjects across five broad subject areas. Overall, 37 Australian institutions will have a published ranking for at least one subject. In last year’s edition, Australia was fourth globally in terms of the most listings (732 times).

Australian universities have continued to do well in standings across subjects, recognising that the rise of Asian universities represents a challenge in engineering and technology related subjects.

As I commented last year (CMM, 4 March 2021), there is such a richness of data in these subject rankings, which can broadly infer many things that occurred in universities in the preceding years. For example, weakening performance in the H index could infer staff movements; lower scores in academic reputation could relate to changes that occurred at discipline level, such as restructuring which resonated in the wider academic community and so forth.

An improved standing in QS Rankings by subject enables institutions to make claims of global excellence and reputation; universities’ press releases and social media channels will be full of praise. The QS Subject Rankings is based on the data which determined a university’s overall score in the QS World University Rankings issued last June.

Times Higher Education Impact Ranking

The fourth edition of is coming out on 24 April. This will be another stellar edition because THE has reported that 1,525 institutions have submitted data for the 2022 ranking, compared to 1,240 institutions in 2021, or 462 for the inaugural ranking in 2019. Universities’ interest in this ranking continues to go from strength to strength despite its many limitations.

We can expect movement in the Impact Rankings as this ranking is not necessarily designed to be stable over time (CMM, 22 April 2021). The top-ranking institution on a specific Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) can be replaced by another the following year. What movement is observed in performance across SDGs considerably influences how a university’s overall score is determined.

Across world regions, universities have committed additional resources to satisfy the requirements to qualify for an overall score in this ranking. Many of the new entrants to the forthcoming Impact Rankings are a range of research intensive, middle- and large-sized institutions, drawn from Japan, the United Kingdom, and European countries.

CWTS Leiden Ranking

The research focused CWTS Leiden Ranking used to be published in May, but in recent years it has come out in June. This ranking does not give institutions an overall score, but claims it offers more advanced bibliometric indicators compared to other university rankings. It rests on a set of scientific impact indicators (such as total number of publications, number and proportion of publications in the top ten percent) as well as collaboration measures (such as number and proportion of papers co-authored with people from industry).

In 2019 Leiden introduced a set of measures which examine the extent to which institutions have embraced open access publishing, as well as a set of measures designed to measure gender balance. In a nutshell, the CWTS Leiden Rankings offers a diverse range of measures compared to the commercially focused rankings. These can be used to democratise many aspects of research production and reduce inequalities in academic endeavours.

Over the years, Leiden has also expanded coverage of institutions. When it started back in 2008 it covered the 500 largest and most research-intensive institutions in Europe and world-wide. The 2021 edition included 1,225 institutions compared to 963 institutions in 2019. 32 Australian universities are included in this ranking, compared to 15 in 2013 (CMM, 3 June 2021).

QS World University Rankings

On 8 June, QS will release its 2023 World University Rankings (QS WUR). Of the 38 Australian universities ranked in last year’s edition, 13 were ranked in the top 200 and two more were close. 50 per cent of the overall score in QS rests on the academic and employer reputation surveys.

In the 2022 edition of QS WUR, Australian universities showed a small but noticeable decline for a second consecutive year in both the academic and employer reputation surveys (CMM, 9 June 2021). This decline is likely to persist for this year’s rankings, influenced by the border closure over the past two years and the continued rise of Asian universities. However, Australian universities are likely to continue to perform well in the citations per faculty and the two international focused measures.

ARWU and HiCis

Since its inception in 2004, the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has come out every year August 15. In the 2021 edition, Australian universities continued to shine. Overall, there were 34 Australian universities included, of which 24 featured in the world’s top 500. As I have previously observed (CMM, 16 August 2021), the real winners in this ranking are not those institutions which owe their performance to the prestige of their alumni and academic staff and highly cited researchers (HiCis), but to those institutions which are making an important contribution through their research output and impact, community outreach, and expanding access.

However, we all tend to focus on how institutions have gained competitive advantage by the number of HiCis an institution has. Based on the results of Clarivate’s 2021 HiCi list, we are likely to see some movement in the overall standing of our universities in the 2022 edition of ARWU. Some institutions are likely to move upwards and downwards, but we are unlikely to see significant shifts.

In the 2021 list of HiCis, Australia numbered 330 researchers, an increase of 25 from 2020. Of the 330 researchers in the list, 314 are affiliated to 29 universities (CMM, 18 November 2021). Since 2015, Australia’s share has increased by 1.7 percent points from 3.3 per cent to 5.0 per cent in 2021. I suspect universities’ research and human resources departments are paying close attention to who is in the list and who could be poached. The HiCi list is usually published in November, with a preliminary list issued in September for verification.  Researchers are encouraged to notify of any change within three to four weeks so that the team at Clarivate can do the final compilation of the list. A failure to do so it may mean that an institution’s standing in ARWU is likely to falter.

THE World Universities Rankings

Times Higher Education has shifted the release of its World Universities Rankings from early September to October 12. Over the past five years, the number of universities ranked by THE has increased considerably – from 1103 in 2018 to 1662 in 2021. Out of the 37 Australian universities in THE WUR, there were 29 included in the world’s top 500 (CMM, 2 September 2021).

Australian universities are expected to do well once again in THE WUR as most universities reported better than expected total institutional revenue and research income figures for 2020. In addition, during the first year of the pandemic, the volume of papers produced by Australian academics increased (by 4 per cent), and this annual increase doubled in 2021 (based on Scopus publications). Therefore, Australian universities are likely to do well, particularly in the per capita measures, recognising that institutions’ overall score is likely to be influenced by results from THE reputation survey.

Other rankings

QS will release its Graduate Employability Ranking in September. This ranking is designed to ascertain which are the best institutions at engaging with employers. Last year’s edition included 20 Australian universities, of which nine featured in the world’s top 100 (CMM, 23 September 2021). Shanghai Rankings’ Global Ranking of Academic Subjects is likely to come out again in May this year. Last year’s edition provided ammunition for 29 Australian universities to claim being the world’s top 100 in at least one subject area (CMM, 27 May 2021).

The global rankings season ends with the release of the USA-based Best Global Universities, which included 39 Australian universities, of which 25 are listed in the world’s top 500. This ranking is more like a consumer’s guide, and you must pay to retrieve more information from the limited information that is displayed on the public website (CMM, 27 October 2021).

Angel Calderon is principal advisor, planning and research at RMIT