"Intrigued by a citation-boosting service that we unravelled during our investigation, we contacted the service while undercover as a fictional author, and managed to purchase 50 citations. These findings provide conclusive evidence that citations can be bought in bulk, and highlight the need to look beyond citation counts."
University X offers short-term fellowships. For remuneration, it pays fellows up to $1,000 for every article they publish in Scopus-indexed journals acknowledging X as their institutional affiliation.
Who would do this? For one, the University of Religions and Denominations (Qom, Iran). Thanks to Nick Wise for publicizing the URD offer.
If uni rankings are useful at all, it's not on reputation. We could use rankings on (say) % of students on financial aid; % of faculty tenured or tenure-track; % of tenured faculty who are women, minorities; ratio of teachers to administrators; ratio of avg faculty salary to head football coach salary…
From Chris Brink: "It is not difficult to construct a university ranking. What is needed is not so much any technical skill as enough blind self-confidence to tell the world that the arbitrary choices you have made in constructing your ranking actually represent reality." https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20231024130858697
Enquanto que em Portugal as universidades andam todas a incentivar/forçar os seus docentes e investigadores a publicarem artigos em catadupa (agora com a ajuda reforçada do ChatGPT e outros chatbots) só para aumentarem artificialmente a sua posição nos rankings, na Holanda mais e mais universidades estão-se nas tintas para esses mesmos rankings...
A diferença está entre dúzias de artigos que ninguém quer ler nem ninguém provavelmente irá ler do princípio ao fim e poucos/alguns artigos que são não só citados noutros papers como também lidos por um número bem mais vasto de pessoas.
Enfim, cada país tem o Estado que merece - e aqui não falo de governo, falo mesmo de Estado. E o Estado de Portugal é pura e simplesmente ignóbil.
#Netherlands#HigherEd#Universities#Rankings: "You may have heard: Utrecht University has not been included in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Ranking 2024.
Too much stress on competition
UU has chosen not to submit data. A conscious choice:
Rankings put too much stress on scoring and competition, while we want to focus on collaboration and open science.
In addition, it is almost impossible to capture the quality of an entire university with all the different courses and disciplines in one number.
Also, the makers of the rankings use data and methods that are highly questionable, research shows."
We adopt a relational approach to explain how & why such a complex landscape of internet freedom rankings has emerged and identify how the ranking organisations’ varying approaches to capturing internet freedom have played a role in defining and legitimating it as a global issue.