Times Higher Education (THE) has just released the second edition of the Interdisciplinary Rankings (ISR).
Once again, those ranked at the top are research intensive, elite, and well-endowed institutions. Ten out of the world’s top 20 are from the United States. The ranking also shows that universities from rising Asia are among the world’s best at interdisciplinary research.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology remains 1st globally, followed by Stanford University, California Institute of Technology and. University of California Berkely. Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University ranks 5th Wageningen University & Research is Europe’s highest ranked institution at 9, followed by Technical University of Munich at 13.
Other Asian universities included among the top are the National University of Singapore, City University of Hong Kong, Chulalongkorn University.
In Australia, RMIT is ranked 44th, followed by Newcastle at 50, Deakin at 64, Wollongong at 108. and Federation in the 201-250 band.
Interestingly, only five Australian universities are fully included in the ranking. The limited participation may be influenced by a fear of not performing as well as expected against both domestic and international peer benchmarks. Another factor may be the amount of volatility experienced in year-to-year results with any new rankings.
The ranking includes more than 900 universities, 150 institutions (or 20%) more than 749 in last year inaugural edition.
The country with the largest number of ranked universities is India with 88, followed by Turkey with 82, and the United States with 46. Interestingly, 356 institutions are listed as reporters, meaning that they have provided partial data and/or are tracking how they will be ranked if they elect to fully participate.
Methodological construct
The ISR methodology consists of three pillars, each representing a stage in the life cycle of research projects: inputs, process, and outputs. Each pillar is further divided into metrics to measure different aspects of that stage. There are 11 metrics in total.
The inputs pillar accounts for 19% of the overall score and comprises two indicators: research funding and industry funding.
The process pillar accounts for 16% of the overall score and comprises four indicators: Measures of success, physical facilities, administrative support, and promotion & tenure.
The process pillar accounts for 65% of the overall score and comprises five indicators. One of them is reputation (25% of the overall score) and is based on a reputation survey that is administered for this purpose. The other items are bibliometric based and drawn from Elsevier’s data: The number and proportion of interdisciplinary science publications, quality of research (i.e., field weighted citation impact), and utility of research (i.e. use of interdisciplinary science outside of discipline citation).
According to THE, this is perhaps the first attempt of its kind to measure universities' contributions and commitment to interdisciplinary science.
What is interdisciplinary science?
For this ranking, the coverage of interdisciplinary science involves when a research project involves two or more science disciplines. THE has defined 11 subjects as published in their annual rankings. For THE, the science disciplines are Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, Engineering and Computer Science.
THE also recognises work as interdisciplinary research when such projects involve one or more scientific disciplines along with one or more disciplines from Social Sciences and/or Clinical and Health, excluding translational medicine.
Parting thoughts
In the absence of meaningful and fit-for-purpose research evaluation at national and regional levels, global rankings will continue to flourish.
As we have seen when new rankings emerge, there is a degree of institutional reticence to participate, because there are unclear definitions and benchmarks by which to ascertain how institutions will fare.
What we have seen is that in the absence of centralised data collection and timely reporting of institutional level performance in many national systems, the major ranking schemas have become a source of institutional benchmarking.
My overall feeling is that THE ISR will continue to increase in participation from across the globe. The basis of measurement will evolve as there is improved understanding of what interdisciplinary science is.
Angel Calderon is Director, Strategic Insights at RMIT University.