Times Higher Education choose Scopus data for its World University Ranking

As you can tell from this post’s title, we have some great news on the Scopus front today!

Times Higher Education (THE), a global leader in university rankings, has today announced their decision to work with the Scopus database and SciVal, Elsevier’s research metrics analysis tool, for its World University Ranking and other rankings including the 100 Under 50, Asia University and BRICS & Emerging Economies rankings.

THE Managing Director Trevor Barratt has this to say about the newly minted partnership, “Research publication data for the rankings will in the future be drawn from Elsevier’s Scopus database. The new data source will allow us to analyze a deeper range of research activity from a wider range of institutions than at present, including those institutions from emerging economies that account for a growing portion of the world’s research output and which have shown a great hunger for THE’s trusted global performance metrics.”

This is a great endorsement of the work we have done over the last 10 years – improving the quality of the Scopus database, the breadth of global coverage and developing the market-leading research metrics and benchmarking tool, SciVal.

Under the agreement with THE, Elsevier will also run their annual global academic reputation survey though THE will have ownership of the results and data behind the ranking indicators enabling them to be more transparent and accountable for their Rankings. Please ask your researchers to look out for their invitation to participate.

Want to see how your institution fares in Scopus? Use the ‘Affiliation Search’ in Scopus to check out your institution’s research output. And let us know if you’d like to learn more about Scopus or SciVal.

Scopus’ position on rankings is similar to our position on the general use of research metrics: a single metric provides a simple, clear point of reference that can be used as a benchmark and it is the combination of multiple metrics (combined with qualitative data and references) that can prove useful in making informed decisions. We believe that university rankings alone do not solve the complex problem of where and what a prospective student should study (or where academics should work). Rankings can, however, play a useful role in choosing where to study by offering comparative data that would otherwise not be available. Read more about our position on rankings on ElsevierConnect.

Have questions for us about Scopus or this partnership? Please reach out to us via email.