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Webology (ISSN: 1735-188X)
Volume 19, Number 2, 2022
A Study On World University Rankings - With The
Focus On Impact Of Research, Citation And
International Outlook Indicators
1 2 3 4
Florim Isufi , Mimoza Dushi* , Ardian Isufi , Ferat Krasniqi ,
Alber Berila5
1Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Faculty of Mathematical and
Natural Sciences, University of Prishtina, Kosovo.
2Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Faculty of Mathematical and
Natural Sciences, University of Prishtina, Kosovo.
3Faculty of Contemporary Sciences and Technologies, South East European
Univerity Tetova, North Macedonia.
4Asistant, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Faculty of Mathematical
and Natural Sciences, University of Prishtina, Kosovo.
5Department of Geography, Faculty of Mathematical and Natural
Sciences, University of Prishtina, Kosovo.
Abstract
The university is a place that elevates and defines the future path of the career.
Choosing a university for further studies is one of the life challenges that every
prospective student faces, especially when not all prospective students have the same
preferences when it comes to studies, but also not all universities offer the same
quality of studies and research. To be able to help the prospective students in this
field, different ranking platforms are available to them, whose main aim is to do a
ranking of world universities according to specific indicators. In this paper we will
analyze the distribution of best ranking universities worldwide according to the World
University Ranking by Times Higher Education with the focus on the impact of the
following three indicators: research, citations, and international students.
Keywords University, ranking, international students, research, The world university
ranking.
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Webology (ISSN: 1735-188X)
Volume 19, Number 2, 2022
Introduction
Recent interest towards university rankings has led to the development of several
ranking systems at national and global levels. Global ranking systems tend to rely on
internationally accessible bibliometric databases and reputation surveys to develop
league tables at a global level (Çakir et al, 2015).People both criticize and applaud
global university rankings. While there is disagreement on which data, methodology
and interpretations are the most robust, many observers believe that global university
rankings are here to stay. With students and academics facing greater options and
opportunities, the existence of these rankings has heightened competition the world
over and governments are now paying closer attention, even utilizing rankings to
determine policies (Frenken et al, 2017). Moreover, the globalization of the higher
education sector has contributed to an increase in competition between universities,
such as that for students (including international students who are often called “cash
cows,” since they generally pay significantly higher tuition and fees (Loyola-
Gonzalez at al, 2020), thus making these publications highly demanded by respective
stakeholders.
Considering the need and importance of such a ranking lists, different global
university ranking platforms publish their lists annually by taking into account their
respective factors. The most well known are:
• Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE), published
annually since 2004 and since 2010 in partnership with Thomson Reuters.
• Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), published annually since
2003 by Institute of Higher Education.
• QS World University Rankings (Quacquarelli Symonds, QS), published
annually since 2004 by The Quacquarelli Symonds.
• CWTS Leiden Ranking), published by Centre for Science and Technology
Studies, since 2011.
In this paper for the purpose of analyzing the distribution of best ranking universities
worldwide we use the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (WUR,
2021) dataset. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings include more
than 1,500 universities across 93 countries and regions, making them the largest and
most diverse university rankings to date (WUR, 2021).
Universities can be excluded from the World University Rankings if they do not teach
undergraduates, or if their research output amounted to fewer than 1,000 relevant
publications between 2015 and 2019 (with a minimum of 150 a year). Universities
can also be excluded if 80 per cent or more of their research output is exclusively in
one of our 11 subject areas (WUR, 2021).
According to the World University Rank in 2021 (WUR, 2021), the ranking is based
on thirteen performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance in:
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Webology (ISSN: 1735-188X)
Volume 19, Number 2, 2022
teaching (with 30%), research (with 30%), citations (with 30 %), international outlook
(with 7.5 %) and industry income (with 2.5%). Each of this group according to the
same source is comprised of specific number of indicators and their weight, where the
sum of weights of each indicator equals the weight of the group in ranking list.
Teaching or the learning environment, consist of reputation survey, staff to student
ratio, doctorate to bachelor ratio, doctorates awarded to academic staff ratio and
institutional income. Research consists of reputation survey, Research income and
research productivity. Citations examines the average number of times a work is
cited. International outlook is combination of proportion of international students,
proportion of international staff and international collaboration.
Performance indications
Industy Income
International Outlook
Citation
Research
Teaching
0 10 20 30 40
Figure 1 The World University Rankings, performance indicator groupings, and
their weight in general ranking
Having a better position in the world university rankings can also increase the
attractiveness of the universities to funding agencies, prospective researchers and
faculty members, and other universities seeking to collaborate on both students and
research exchange, which consequently increase their research performance (Loyola-
Gonzalez at al, 2020).
Many countries, developed as well as developing, have designed policies and study
programs to attract talented people as students, temporary workers and immigrants
(Kuptish and Pang, 2006). International students have become an increasingly
important research object – not only on the basis of the overall expansion and
importance of international students in higher education and in national economic
policies, but also since they constitute a strategic research object for understanding the
global landscape of higher education (Borjesön, 2018). For the international outlook,
THE ranking considers the ability of a university to attract undergraduates,
postgraduates and faculty from all over the globe as key to its success.
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Webology (ISSN: 1735-188X)
Volume 19, Number 2, 2022
Citations in other hand are a very important factor in the ranking. According to the
World University Rank (WUR, 2021) the citations help to show us how much each
university is contributing to the sum of human knowledge: they tell us whose research
has stood out, has been picked up and built on by other scholars and, most
importantly, has been shared around the global scholarly community to expand the
boundaries of our understanding, irrespective of discipline. The data in THE dataset
consists of more than 24,000 academic journals indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus
database and all other indexed publications.
Given the impact of the above mentioned indicators also in different publications
(Loyola-Gonzalez at al, 2020; Kuptish and Pang, 2006, WUR, 2021) and based on the
dataset provided by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE),
we have selected these three factors for further analysis in our paper:
• Research - which in the ranking consists of: reputation survey, research
income and research productivity.
• Citation - which in our case is based on bibliometric data supplier Elsevier
examined more than 86 million citations to 13.6 million journal articles, article
reviews, conference proceedings, books and book chapters.
• International outlook - with the following sub-indicators: proportion of
international students, proportion of international staff and international
collaboration.
Hypotheses
To refer the impact of certain indicators as whole on the ranking of universities is a
broad field of study. To be more concise and to give more clarity, in this paper we
will try to achieve the “t” aim and purpose, by presenting the following five
hypotheses, which we will try to prove through statistical analysis.
H1: Most of the ranking universities from the TOP15 in the ranking list are located in
one of the countries of Europe or United States of America.
H2: Research has an impact (affects) in the world ranking of universities.
H3: Citation has an impact (affects) in the world ranking of universities.
H4: International outlook has an impact (affects) in the world ranking of universities.
H5: Citation has an impact (affects) the international outlook.
Related work
The publication of global university ranking lists has increased the interest for using
them (both by prospective students and their parents but also from academic world),
more precisely, a various studies and analyses are being made with the intention to see
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