Open AccessThe Shanghai Global Ranking of Academic Subjects: Room for improvement
Author(s) -
Erwin Krauskopf
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
el profesional de la información
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.698
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1699-2407
pISSN - 1386-6710
DOI - 10.3145/epi.2021.jul.08
Subject(s) - ranking (information retrieval) , popularity , quality (philosophy) , higher education , political science , regional science , public relations , medical education , geography , computer science , medicine , information retrieval , philosophy , epistemology , law
Global university rankings have achieved public popularity as they are portrayed as an objective measure of the quality of higher education institutions. One of the latest rankings is the Shanghai Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, which classifies institutions according to five fields –Engineering, Life Sciences, Medical Sciences, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences– which are divided into 54 subjects. Despite being introduced in 2017, no study has analyzed the methodology applied by this ranking. The results of our analysis show that the methodology currently used by the Shanghai Global Ranking of Academic Subjects presents several issues, which negatively affect a large proportion of universities around the world. Needless to say, if the Shanghai Global Ranking of Academic Subjects is meant to be global, it needs to expand its surveys to countries located in the Global South.