Proportion of collaborative publications as an ultimate indicator of Leiden 2013 world best universities rankings

Abstract

In recent years different models for ranking universities were introduced, each of them contributing immensely to the topic of university rankings. This paper will provide an overview of currently most popular ranking methods and in particular provide a thorough analysis of Leiden ranking methodology. Although providing valuable data, Leiden rankings fail to present an integrated indicator which can rank universities accordingly (characteristics of ARWU and THE ranking methodologies). As a remedy to the issue, by using statistical I-distance method we will integrate all the Leiden 2013 ranking indicators into one value, which will therefore represent a rank. Moreover, our results will provide us with the information on which of the input indicators is the most important one for the process of ranking. Our results clearly show that the Proportion of collaborative publications occupies the most significant spot. Moreover, performances of Universities of Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade are presented and elaborated upon.