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What proportion of excellent papers makes an institution one of the best worldwide? Specifying thresholds for the interpretation of the results of the SCI mago Institutions Ranking and the Leiden Ranking
Author(s) -
Bornmann Lutz,
Moya Anegón Felix
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of the association for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.903
H-Index - 145
eISSN - 2330-1643
pISSN - 2330-1635
DOI - 10.1002/asi.23047
Subject(s) - ranking (information retrieval) , institution , context (archaeology) , excellence , scopus , computer science , interpretation (philosophy) , order (exchange) , political science , information retrieval , business , medline , geography , law , archaeology , finance , programming language
University rankings generally present users with the problem of placing the results given for an institution in context. Only a comparison with the performance of all other institutions makes it possible to say exactly where an institution stands. In order to interpret the results of the SCI mago I nstitutions R anking (based on S copus data) and the L eiden R anking (based on W eb of S cience data), in this study we offer thresholds with which it is possible to assess whether an institution belongs to the top 1%, top 5%, top 10%, top 25%, or top 50% of institutions in the world. The thresholds are based on the excellence rate or PP top 10% . Both indicators measure the proportion of an institution's publications which belong to the 10% most frequently cited publications and are the most important indicators for measuring institutional impact. For example, while an institution must achieve a value of 24.63% in the Leiden Ranking 2013 to be considered one of the top 1% of institutions worldwide, the SCI mago I nstitutions R anking requires 30.2%.