Ranking season has begun and Flinders is showing a creditable performance despite a challenging year, with the Shanghai (ARWU) subject rankings showing a mix of improvement and decline, the Leiden ranking making for interesting reading, and Round University Ranking (RUR) making gains.
The ARWU uses 5 metrics to assess subjects – the number of influential journal publications (Q1 publications), citations, international collaboration, number of papers in top journals and notable staff awards.
Flinders has made some good gains in the fields of Human Biological Sciences (improving by 60 places) with increased scores in Citation Impact and International Collaboration, Nursing (improving by 39 places) with increased scores in all metrics, particularly in Q1 Publications and Papers in Top Journals, and Education (improving 28 places) with Q1 Publications, Citation Impact and International Collaboration, particularly Citation Impact.
Flinders’ rankings remained unchanged in a further 11 fields…
- Earth Sciences, in the 301-400 group
- Ecology, in the 301-400 group
- Material Science and Engineering, in the 401-500 group
- Environmental Science and Engineering, in the 4001-500 group
- Human Biological Sciences, in the 401-500 group
- Agricultural Sciences, in the 401-500 group
- Law, ranked in the 201-300 group
- Political Science, ranked in the 201-300 group
- Psychology, ranked in the 201-300 group
- Public Administration, ranked in the 151-200 group
- Hospitality and Tourism Management, ranked in the 151-200 group
… and eased in Biological Sciences , Public Health, and Clinical Medicine, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and just slightly in our top ranked field Water Resources, which moved marginally from 13 in 2020 to 17 in 2021.
A different approach to ranking is taken by Leiden – it is not a league table in the same way as ARWU, THE and QS are, and the order of the universities will change depending on the type of indicators selected.
A comparison of the three SA universities based on the Scientific Impact indicators – the way the ranking is presented when their web page is opened – shows that whilst all fell in terms of the number of overall publications, Flinders has increased both the number, and the proportion of publications in the top 10% of most frequently cited, whereas the other two universities fell.
The lesser-followed RUR recently released its 2021 results, placing Flinders 327 in the world, up from 386 in 2020, and 16 in Australia, up from 19 in 2020.
The 2022 QS ranking is due tomorrow, the overall ARWU will land in August and the one we most watch for, Times Higher Education, will release its 2022 ranking early September.