STM publisher Elsevier has announced that the inaugural and newly-released '2015 Best Chinese University Ranking' report, based on Shanghai Ranking Consultancy (SRC)'s evaluation, is anchored on its Scopus research database and powered by metrics from SciVal analytics – both part of the Elsevier Research Intelligence portfolio. The report provides a detailed look at key research performance indicators of more than 1,000 higher education institutions across mainland China.
SRC's ranking of Chinese universities offers objective benchmarking of research performance of higher education institutions, allowing research management offices and higher education agencies to make strategic decisions around policy development and investments towards building the research capabilities of these universities.
The methodology for the '2015 Best Chinese University Ranking' report is based on nine (9) indicators that evaluate the role of a university including aspects of teaching and learning, research performance as well as social services. According to SRC, these nine indicators enable the independent and objective evaluation of the academic performance of Chinese institutes of higher education in a transparent and open manner.
The '2015 Best Chinese University Ranking' report, including the methodology used and raw data of all evaluated indicators, is now available for download at http://www.zuihaodaxue.com.
In addition, the 2014 list of China's most influential researchers has also been made available. The list, using SRC's selection criteria, was developed in collaboration with Elsevier, who provided the citation data indicators.
Further to SRC, Elsevier also provides Scopus data and SciVal analytics to Times Higher Education's World University ranking, US News & World Report's Arab Region Ranking, the Financial Times' MBA Ranking and QS' Top Universities Ranking for their respective organizations' rankings.
According to the '2015 Best Chinese University Ranking' report over the past five years, from 2009 to 2013, Zhejiang University is the highest publisher of research papers. This is respectively followed by Shanghai Jiaotong University, Tsinghua University, Peking University and the newly established University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Over the same five-year period, 31 universities achieved a Field-Weighted Citation Index (FWCI) higher than the global average value of '1' for their research papers. Amongst the community of most influential researchers listed, Tsinghua University leads with 106 most influential researchers, while Peking University, Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiaotong University and Fudan University each has more than 50 researchers listed as most influential.
Scopus claims to be the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and features tools to track, analyze and visualize scholarly research. Its comprehensive database contains more than 55 million items indexed from 21,000 titles from more than 5,000 publishers worldwide, ensuring broad interdisciplinary coverage in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities. Scopus was designed and developed with input from researchers and librarians and features direct links to subscribed full-text articles, other library resources and interoperability with applications such as reference management software. Scopus is part of the Elsevier Research Intelligence portfolio which includes the SciVal tools, the Pure system, rich data assets and custom Analytical Services.
