Quantity or quality: what matters more in ranking higher education institutions?

Abstract

The issue of ranking higher education institutions has drawn much attention as of late. Many ranking models are being introduced; however, only a few of them incorporate quality dimensions rather than just absolute number of published papers, awards gained, etc. As a possible remedy to the issue, we applied statistical I-distance method on a dataset presented by SCImago Institutions Rankings methodology. Results pointed out that quality indicators such as 'Excellence Rate' and 'Normalized Impact' are far more important than gross number of published papers. In addition, a comparison of scientific output between China and India is elaborated upon.