Indicators of global university rankings: The theoretical issues

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to determine the significance of identified university ranking indicators in relation to the overall measurement system of selected global ranking systems. The realisation of the research was divided into two phases. The first phase consists of a systematic overview of the literature that has resulted in the identification of 16 global ranking systems. In the second phase, an empirical analysis of 10 active ranking systems which were selected based on the set criteria. The ranking systems are observed regarding their measurement focus. According to the results of empirical analysis, the research category indicators account for 67.93% of the sum of the weight coefficients in the overall measurement system, followed by the reputation category indicators with 13.5% and the web performance category indicators with 9.37%. The most significant number of global ranking systems dominantly puts its focus in the context of measuring research performance as the crucial indicator of the quality and competitiveness of universities.