South Africa’s University of Cape Town (UCT) remains among the top 300 universities in the world, according to a survey released last week.
However, according to one South African analyst (see below), the ARWU ratings are skewed because they do not accurately represent the quality and quantity of research in the country.
According to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) survey, published by China’s Shanghai Jiatong University every year, UCT continues to be the top research university on the continent of Africa.
UCT vice-chancellor Max Price has in the past attributed its good performance to academics’ high publication rate.
UCT’s publication output grew by five percent per year from 2005 to 2008.
The institution’s research income also increased by 18 percent in 2009, Price said.
The institution also increased the number of researchers who underwent rating by the country’s National Research Foundation (NRF), from 293 in 2008 to 320 in 2009.
The NRF said its rating system is based “on the quality of the research outputs in the recent past and is undertaken by national and international reviewers who are requested to critically scrutinise the completed research.”
Wits University
South Africa’s Wits University is the second-highest ranked university in Africa, according to the ARWU rankings.
The university maintained its 2010 position and so continues to be listed among the world’s top 400 in the Shanghai Rankings.
The number of NRF-rated researchers at Wits, led by mathematician and vice-chancellor Loyiso Nongxa, increased from 137 in 2004 to 196 in 2009.
Each academic staff member produces 1.5 papers every year.
University of KwaZulu-Natal
The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) was listed as among the top 500 in the Shanghai rankings.
The university, which has been listed in the rankings for the eighth time, maintained its 2010 position.
UKZN vice-chancellor Malegapuru William Makgoba, an immunologist, attributed the ranking to “innovative research.’’
However, Makgoba bemoaned the low representation of African universities in the rankings.
“Clearly as a country and continent we are doing poorly in this ranking system,’’ he said.
“There is a clear signal and simple message being communicated through these rankings, that is, they speak to quality and the long cherished core values of a university,” Makgoba said.
University of Pretoria
Nelius Boshoff, a senior researcher from the Centre for Evaluation, Research, Science and Technology (CREST) at Stellenbosch University, noted that South Africa’s University of Pretoria lost its ranking in the 2008 ARWU survey.
‘‘But its performance does not show any significant change in terms of the number of articles on which the science citation and social science indexes and Nature and Science journal indicators are based,’’ he said.
The number of articles appearing in the expanded science citation index and the social sciences citation index forms one of six measures by which the universities are assessed by ARWU.
Stellenbosch University
Boshoff, writing in the South African Journal of Higher Education in 2009, also noted that South Africa’s respected Stellenbosch University has never been ranked among ARWU’s top 500 universities.
He argued that UKZN was able to benefit in the ARWU rankings because UKZN has one highly-cited scientist and four more ‘‘reprint author’’ affiliations in the journals Nature and Science.
The Shanghai rankings consider the number of articles published in the journals Nature and Science as one of its six key indicators.
His article, entitled ‘‘Shanghai academic ranking of world universities (ARWU) and the ‘big five’ South African universities,’’ also suggested that in the past, some ARWU indicator scores have violated ‘‘the original proportionality in the source data.’’
See ‘‘Four African universities in the world’s top 500’’ and ‘‘University of Cairo returns to top 500’’ elsewhere in this issue for more on the Shanghai rankings.
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