Reproducibility of the Shanghai academic ranking of world universities results

Abstract

This paper discusses and copes with the difficulties that arise when trying to reproduce the results of the Shanghai academic ranking of world universities. In spite of the ambiguity of the methodology of the ranking with regard to the computation of the scores on its six indicators, the paper presents a set of straightforward procedures to estimate raw results and final relative scores. Discrepancies between estimated scores and the results of the ranking are mostly associated with the difficulties encountered in the identification of institutional affiliations, and are not significant. We can safely state that the results of the Shanghai academic ranking of world universities are in fact reproducible. © 2012 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary.