The 2024 edition of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) is coming out later this week. Once the results are out, it will highlight how the global landscape of higher education is changing. It will also highlight the continued progress of Chinese universities and the decrease in knowledge production among institutions from high income economies, particularly from the UK and the USA. It is clear that we are evolving from a bipolar world to a tripolar world.
There are also indications that the performance of Australian universities is declining. This decline should be a concern to us all.
In the first edition of ARWU in 2003, nine universities were from mainland China, with Tsinghua University ranked in the 201-250 band and Peking University in the 251-300 band. In the 2023 edition, 89 universities from mainland China were among the top 500, with four among the top 50 and another six ranked in the 51-100 band.
Last year, Tsinghua ranked 22 and Peking 29, followed by Zhejiang University at 33, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University at 46, acting as China’s highest ranked institutions. Back in 2003, Zhejiang ranked in the 351-400 band and Jiao Tong ranked in the 401-450 band.
What drove this growth?
One of the key metrics used by ARWU is the number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index.
Using Clarivate’s InCites, we can see that 14 of the top 20 institutions with the greatest number of articles published in 2023 were from China. Back in 2003, Tsinghua was China’s top article producer and ranked 54 overall, with four institutions in the top 200 for the number of articles published.
The University of Chinese Academy (CAS) has published more articles than Harvard University for the past two years. In 2023, CAS published 27,259 articles, 20% more than Harvard (22,690). Back in 2003, the volume of articles published by CAS represented only 3% of the articles published by Harvard.
Additionally, Zhejiang has been the world’s third top producer of articles for the past two years. In 2023, Zhejiang published 19,292 articles – 15% lower than Harvard. In 2003, Zhejiang published 1,850 articles representing only 18% of those from Harvard. So much has changed in the past twenty years.
What about Australia?
Between 2003 and 2023, the number of Australian universities included in the world’s top 100 in ARWU increased from two to five. Furthermore, the number of universities ranked in the top 500 increased from 13 to 24.
These gains are largely attributed to the growth in research outputs between 2003 and 2019, resulting from the strong increase in the number of international students in Australian universities.
In 2003, there were 10 Australian universities with a volume of articles that placed them in the world’s top 500 article producers. By 2019 this had increased to 19 universities but decreased to 17 in 2023.
During the pandemic year of 2020, the volume of articles published by researchers from Australian universities increased by 7% and 2021 saw an increase of 8%. However, over the past two years, the volume of articles published decreased by 10% per year.
The decrease in the volume of articles published is not unique to Australia; it is also occurring in other higher income economies. By comparison, we see continued increases for China, India and various other middle-income economies.
While China continues to increase rapidly in volume of articles published, it is lagging on impact. By impact, I am referring to Clarivate’s Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI). The CNCI measure is calculated by dividing the actual count of citing items by the expected citation rate for documents with the same document type, year of publication, and subject area. A CNCI value of 2 is considered twice the world average.
Over the 2003 to 2023 period, Australia has had a higher CNCI than China, and since 2012, Australia has had a higher CNCI than the USA. In 2023, Australia had a CNCI of 1.54 compared to 1.24 for the USA. Australia has also had a higher CNCI than the UK since 2019, except in 2022.
A key factor that has contributed to the uplift of Australian universities in ARWU is the number of highly cited researchers (i.e., those who are in the world’s top 1% of researchers based on citations). Australia’s share of highly cited researchers has increased from 3.3% in 2015 to 4.7% in 2023, although Australia’s share peaked in 2021 at 5.0%. In 2023, Australia was fifth globally in the number of highly cited researchers (321), behind the USA, China, the UK, and Germany.
Given the current uncertainty pertaining to government policy and funding, we need to take immediate action to counter declining performance.
Forging ahead
In the absence of increased investment in research endeavors in Australia, the possibility for our universities to rank higher in ARWU and all other global rankings is limited.
Australian universities are a base for researchers who have immigrated here. Those researchers in our diaspora are an invaluable resource for their homeland and are likely to be part of emigrant research networks.
On these bases, our attention needs to be focused on:
- increasing both the volume and share of international collaboration – particularly bolstering and deepening collaboration with researchers and institutions across world regions,
- boosting article publication in top journals (1%, 10% and quartile 1) with breadth and depth of international collaboration,
- strengthening multidisciplinary research, and
- creating more incentives for women to progress their academic careers.
In doing so, our university leaders need to make it easier for our researchers to publish in open access journals, create and foster incentives for early career researchers to meaningfully participate in research endeavors, and be part of university’s decision-making process.
Angel Calderon is Director, Strategic Insights at RMIT University
