RUR Reputation World University Rankings
Methodology

Reputation is one of the crucial factors of successful university’s competitiveness on the global scale. It is the reputation, the name of university and its brand that largely determines the attractiveness of university to potential students, faculty.


At the same time, reputation is one of the most difficult phenomena to measure. A large amount of factors influences reputation – all university’s activities in each aspect affect power of university within both the country and the world.


Understanding the conditionality of reputational surveys, with which the reputation in the RUR ranking is assessed, we however, publish a separate reputation ranking.


Methodology of RUR reputation ranking


RUR Reputation ranking is based on two indicators, similar with RUR World University Ranking methodology:

  • Teaching Reputation (50%);
  • Research Reputation (50%).

  • The final score of university is equal to the average score on the two indicators above (2010-2017 rankings editions). RUR 2018-2019 Reputation Rankings are based directly on the raw reputation data which is the share of total number of votes obtained by a particular institution in the framework of an academic reputation survey.


      If universities share the same score, they are given the same rank. This rank is assigned based on the average arithmetic mean of the universities’ interval with the same point value. For example, if 10 universities in the 100-110 range obtained the same score, such universities are given the same rank – 105th.

      The RUR Reputation ranking is entirely based on special reputational data survey run by Clarivate Analytics annually via its Academic Reputation Survey.

    Academic Reputation Survey kye facts:


  • 10 years coverage (2010-2019);
  • 70,000 respondents’ answers;
  • 6,500 universities which received at least 1 vote;
  • 105 presented subject categories;
  • 1100 participating universities in RUR Reputation Ranking during 2010-2019 period.

  • The reputational survey is balanced both by geographic regions and by subject areas. In detailed information on distribution of respondents ' votes by different parameters is presented below.


    The geographical distribution of the respondent's votes:


  • North America – 36%;
  • South and Central America – 6%;
  • Europe – 28%;
  • Asia – 20%;
  • Africa – 5%;
  • Oceania – 5%.

  • The distribution of respondents’ votes by subject areas:


  • Social sciences – 20%;
  • Engineering sciences – 20%;
  • Medical sciences – 19%;
  • Natural Sciences – 17%;
  • Life sciences – 14%;
  • Humanities – 10%.

  • Data sources of the reputational survey


    The initial information collected through a special questionnaire, participation in which is by invitation only, lies in the basis of the reputational survey. In other words, the universities are unable to recommend external experts, as it is practiced in a number of other rankings.


    The respondent is asked to indicate the following information in the questionnaire:


  • Current university, for which he worked for or with which he has collaborated recently (however, it is not permitted to vote for your own university);
  • Geographic region with which the respondent is familiar to by the greatest degree (one of 13 aggregated regions);
  • Narrow subject category (in accordance with the scheme, 250 narrow subject categories by Web of Science Core Collection);
  • Select up to 15 universities a) in his region and separately b) up to 15 universities in the world, which the respondent considers to be the most powerful in terms of quality of research in the framework of the previously selected subject category;
  • Select up to 15 universities a) in his region and separately b) up to 15 universities in the world, which the respondent considers to be the most powerful in terms of quality of teaching in the framework of the previously selected subject category.

  • Respondent’s profile:


  • The average respondent is a representative of the academic sector: faculty (72%), researchers (13%), university management (13%), PhD students (3%), and other positions (5%).
  • Average working experience - 17 to 20 years.