University leaders pay close attention to comparative rankings offered by Times Higher Education, ShanghaiRanking Consultancy and others. Rankings influence student enrollment numbers, attract talented faculty, and justify donations from wealthy donors. College leaders oppose them and some schools “withdraw” from them, but the rankings have an impact.
A radical shift in the data underlying the rankings is about to turn the rankings world upside down, largely in favor of China.
For example, in early 2024, the CWTS group of the Center for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University published new university rankings that add open data sources to the traditional selected list of outstanding journals. The results show that the world has turned upside down in university rankings.
While the list of universities with the highest scientific impact was once Oxford, Stanford, Harvard and MIT, the new top 10 list of universities with high scientific impact includes eight universities from China. Only Harvard and the University of Toronto are in the top 10.
What does this transformation mean for understanding scientific excellence? I examine the global research system and its contribution to social welfare. China’s rapid progress in science and technology, supported by investments in research and university power, has alarmed the United States and other countries. Concerns are growing that the United States may be losing its competitive advantage to an assertive rival; This has potential consequences for national security, economic situation and global influence. These new rankings will likely cause even more alarm.
A wider range from more sources
Ranking programs rely heavily on quantitative assessments called “indicators.” A look at the influential ShanghaiRanking criteria shows that input for its evaluation includes “articles indexed in major citation indices.” Popular indexes are taken from a set of highly selected scientific journals, such as Cell, The Lancet and Chemical Reviews. The most well-known index that collects information about these and other journals is Web of Science’s Science Citation Index, or SCI, which is a product of careful standardization and data enrichment by Clarivate.
However, SCI represents only a fraction of the studies published worldwide. Among other criticisms, many decry SCI’s exclusivity and perceived Western bias.
But careful compilation makes it the gold standard of academic indexing and a standard to which journals and authors aspire to join. Its value is in its repeatability: It is possible to dive into it multiple times and produce comparable results using different search strategies.
With the introduction of rankings based on open data such as those collected by OpenAlex, trust in curated databases is about to end. OpenAlex claims to include more than 100,000 journals of widely varying quality and editorial practices, compared to SCI’s 9,200 issues. All data on OpenAlex is made publicly available with the laudable goal of making research freely accessible to everyone. The downside is this broader network of predatory journals that exploit researchers and undermine the quality and integrity of scholarly communication.
Reflects China’s research productivity
The volume of scientific articles represented in open databases has a major impact on China’s position in open source rankings. Chinese scholars produce a wealth of written works, some in English, some in Chinese; Estimates of percentage shares for languages vary widely, but tend to hover around 50-50. As China invests in education and expands its science and engineering capacity, many more people are publishing scientific papers.
According to UNESCO data, there were 2.2 million scientists and engineers in China by 2023, compared to very few in the 1980s. China’s production of scientific and engineering articles has been increasing rapidly since the 1990s; growth outpaces all other countries. Quality has lagged behind quantity, but China surpasses the United States in the total number of scientific publications on the Web of Science; By my calculations, this is a change in leadership not seen since the US overtook Britain in 1948.
Although the figures are old, when I counted China’s scientific publications in 2010, my colleague and I estimated that between 2000 and 2009, China published approximately 1 million scientific papers that were not captured by the Web of Science. This means they don’t “count” in traditional rankings. These publications are counted in new open databases. Many articles appearing in open source or open access journals will not be considered high quality; yet they become part of the written record.
Open access publishing services have grown rapidly and offer fast publication times, but there are questions about the quality of their journals. Open publishing services such as MDPI and Frontiers have a much larger number of Chinese contributors compared to those in other countries.
Open access services often include content from potential paper mills, businesses that produce what appear to be scientific manuscripts for sale. Despite concerns about the reputation and editorial practices of these publishers and editors, there is little oversight. These services flood the publishing world with a multitude of low-quality articles.
Chinese researchers and their sponsoring institutions place great emphasis on publishing even in international journals hosted by questionable publishers. Citation stacking practices (when authors cite works by citizens of the same country to raise their citation profile) distort the numbers to boost China’s performance.
China is trying to crack down on malicious apps. The Chinese government recently announced the retraction of 17,000 articles involving a Chinese author or co-author. Efforts to improve quality continue. State payments to researchers for articles in ranked journals are ending.
Despite the quality questions, the numbers alone will move China up the ranking lists. This rapid change will strengthen China’s position relative to the rest of the world. This rise does not in itself reflect a change in quality, status or production, but it will continue to fuel the fire of those alarmed by China’s rise in world science, technology and innovation circles, and perhaps make the rankings even more questionable.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent, nonprofit news organization providing facts and authoritative analysis to help you understand our complex world. Written by Caroline Wagner Ohio State University
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Caroline Wagner does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic duties.