"Academics strike back at spurious rankings" (Nature, 31 May)

[Loet Leydesdorff]

>     "All current university rankings are flawed to some extent; most,
>     fundamentally,"

The problem is that institutions are not the right unit of analysis for the
bibliometric comparison because citation and publication practices vary
among disciplines and specialties. Universities are mixed bags.

Our Leiden colleagues try to correct for this by normalizing on the journal
set which the group uses itself, but one can also ask whether the group is
using the best possible set given its research profile. Should one not first
determine a journal set and then compare groups within it? 

Furthermore, Brewer et al. (2001) made the point that one should also
distinguish between prestige and reputation. Reputation is field specific;
prestige is more historical. (Brewer, D. J., Gates, S. M., & Goldman, C. A.
(2001). In Pursuit of Prestige: Strategy and Competition in U.S. Higher
Education. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, Rutgers University.)

Many of the evaluating teams are institutionally dependent on the contracts
for the evaluations. Quis custodies custodes? 

With best wishes, 


Loet
________________________________

Loet Leydesdorff 
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), 
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. 
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681 
loet at leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/