Analysis to World-class Universities and Research Institutions Evaluation Results in 2010

QIU Junping  ZHAO Rongying  MA Feng  WANG Feifei

(Research Center for China Science Evaluation, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China)

Abstract: Research Center for China Science Evaluation have published successive “Evaluation Report on Subject Competitiveness of World-Class Universities and Research Institutions” in 2005, 2007 and 2009, with the purpose of creating a comprehensive and systematical criterion for the quality evaluation of world-class universities. This is the fourth time to study the scientific competitiveness of world-class universities and research institutions. Multi-indicator evaluation methods are adopted to yield an overall competitiveness score for each world-class university. This paper gives overall developments and changes of world-class universities. It is observed that the ranking of world-class universities has been fluctuating significantly. Recent years have witnessed steady progress of China universities, and there is still much room for their improvement.

Keywords: Education; Indicators; Information Analysis; World-class University; Discipline Construction

1. Introduction

Rising demands from various sectors of society for university evaluation has been intensified over the years, and the public are requiring more right to know about the universities. Most university rankings are targeted on undergraduate education (wapedia, nd). Many rankings on world’s universities have been published in the past few years, i.e. “World’s Best Colleges” published by U.S. News and World Report (U.S. News and World Report, 2010), “Academic Ranking of World Universities” of Graduate School Education published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China Mainland (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2010) , “THE World University Rankings” published by Times Higher Education (Times Higher Education Supplement, 2010), and “Webometrics Rankings of World Universities” of Consejo Superiorde Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Spain (Cybermetrics Lab of Consejo Superiorde Investigaciones Científicas, 2010).

Based on previous evaluation programs, the first evaluation report for research competitiveness by Research Center for China Science Evaluation (RCCSE) was released in 2005. RCCSE has been conducting comprehensive study on status quo, research quality of world universities and research institutions every two years. It has issued three reports on competitiveness situation of world-class university and research institution since 2005. Considering reality needs, our RCCSE conduct an evaluation on world-class university and research institution in 2010. From September to October this year, researchers in RCCSE concentrate their efforts on investigating the research competitiveness of world-class universities and research institutions. Investigation and analysis on world-class university is of great significance since it provides a blueprint of status quo and development of world-class university education. Consequently, the reports will lend support not only to identifying problems within China university education, but also to the advancement of higher education.

2. Approach to World-class Universities Evaluation

Generally, bibliometric methods are used for university evaluation. In this study, metrological approach will be introduced to evaluate the competitiveness of world-class universities. Evaluation on world-class universities is carried out according to the following factors. Firstly, to ensure the continuity of evaluation and comparability of the evaluation results, research subjects and scope, data sources and data processing method, indicators used are inherited from previous years with some subtle modifications to reflect the new laws and characteristics of world-class universities. Secondly, in world-class university research competitiveness evaluation, the data is from the ESI databases developed by the United States Thomson Reuters, and the patent databases DII. Both databases are comprehensive with world-wide reputation, which will ensure the authority and credibility of the data.

2.1 Evaluation Subjects and Scope

A citation threshold of ESI is applied to each field ranking: institutions are selected if they are in the top 1% by total citations in a given field (The Thomson Corporation, 2010). All the 1565 universities and 960 research institutions meeting the condition are selected as the evaluation subjects. The totally 1565 universities are included in the Ranking of the Scientific Research Competitiveness of World-class Universities. And all the 1565 universities and 960 research institutions are involved in the Rankings of Discipline Competitiveness Rankings of World-class Universities and Institutions.

2.2 Index System

Four primary indicators and seven secondary indictors are selected to form the index system for evaluation of scientific research competitiveness of world-class universities and research institutions. The index system is shown in Table 1.

Table 1   Index System of Research Competitiveness Evaluation of World-class Universities

2.3 Data Source

Original paper data are obtained from Essential Science Index (ESI) and patent data come from Derwent Innovations Index (DII) provided by Thomson Scientific. The span of the paper data is from Jan. 1^st, 2000 to August. 31^st, 2010, and the span of the patent data is from the year of 2005 to 2010. According to the characteristics of the disciplines in ESI and DII database, the patent data of Chemistry, Electrical & Electronics and Engineering are placed within the disciplines of Chemistry, Physics, and Engineering in ESI respectively. Highly cited papers are selected based on the top 1% by field and by year. Hot papers are selected based on a current two month citation window looking back only two years. A 0.1% threshold is applied to each field and bimonthly period over the two year span (THOMSON REUTERS, 2010). Thirdly, the 22 disciplines in ESI are Agricultural Sciences, Biology & Biochemistry, Chemistry, etc.

3. Results Analysis

This evaluation has yielded 30 rankings, i.e., “the Scientific Competitiveness Rankings of World-class Universities”, “Discipline Competitiveness Rankings of World-class Universities and Institutions (22 disciplines)” and “Scientific Competitiveness Rankings of World-class Universities on Basic Indicators (7 indicators)”.  Some important details are as follows.

(1) Remarkable improvement of the overall scientific research strength of China

The total score and the scores of each indicator of the top 10 countries and regions are shown in Table 2. The United States stands out on the top with each indicator score ranked the first, which indicates its leading position in scientific research. China Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan are among the top 30 countries/regions. China Mainland have been rising continuously from 2007 to 2010, with rank number of 20^th in 2007, 12^th in 2009, then 7^th in 2010 (Qiu, J., Yang, R., et al., 2009; Qiu, J., et al., 2007; Qiu, J., & Ma, R., 2007) , the greatest progress among the top 30 countries/regions. Ranks of Hong Kong (23^nd) and Taiwan (28^th) are flat from 2007 to 2010. All of these show that China’s scientific research strength has been greatly improved. Both the risen number of universities indexed by ESI rankings and the present indicators data indicate the improvement. For instance, the number of universities in China Mainland among the ESI rankings has risen from 49 in 2007 to 70 in 2009 to 91 in 2010. There are 6 universities located in Hong Kong among the ESI rankings without change. Taiwan has 40 universities among the ESI rankings in 2010. In addition, compared with the evaluation results of 2007 and 2009, the scores of each indicator (except for patents) of China Mainland have also increased.