This article used Altmetrics data extracted from Altmetric.com to rank twenty-two public universities in South Africa that yielded data in the database, as well as to compare their altmetrics and webometrics rankings. Descriptive statistics and correlation analyses were conducted to uncover the universities' ranking patterns across several indicators and sources. The findings reveal that the historically advantaged universities that have continued to dominate the global ranking systems performed better than the historically disadvantaged universities. There were strong and positively significant relationships between altmetrics and the citation-based rankings on the one hand, and the webometrics rankings on the other hand – albeit a few instances of weak relationships between the variables. The authors propose the consideration of altmetrics as alternative impact indicators in the global rankings systems in an attempt to achieve a more robust and pluralistic picture.
TopIntroduction
The global ranking of universities has become one of the common agenda items in policy and strategic discourses of many institutions of higher learning in the world. Worldwide, universities have prioritized the establishment and/enhancement of mechanisms and/or strategies to improve their global standing in terms of academic and research performances. The use and value of the ranking systems have drawn varied reactions from stakeholders who include policy makers, institutional leaders, governments, researchers, students, and funding agencies. Some scholars believe that the ranking systems influence student enrolments (Hussain, Hanaysha & Kamarudin 2018), while others argue that university prestige, reputation and power are some of the benefits that are associated with the ranking of universities (Sadlak, Merisotis & Liu 2008). The issue of quality assurance has also been alluded to as one of the drivers of ranking universities (Federkeil 2008; Sadlak, Merisotis & Liu 2008; Rozman & Marhl 2008). In addition, Sadlak, Merisotis & Liu (2008) believe that university rankings raise the global visibility of universities. This aspect is particularly important as the world has witnessed a vast growth in higher education in recent decades (Hussain, Hanaysha & Kamarudin 2018).
Equally contested are the appropriate and relevant (or “good”) indicators for ranking universities. It is widely acknowledged that research performance and academic quality constitute a suit of indicators by which universities are ranked in global ranking systems (Vernon, Balas & Momani 2018). In their systematic review of 24 ranking systems, out of which 13 were the target of their study, Vernon, Balas & Momani (2018) report that research performance is a key consideration in the evaluation of university performance for purposes of ranking the universities. The authors observed that, out of all the systems that report weighting, 76% of the ranks are attributed to research indicators while only 24% are attributed to academic or teaching quality and that six of the ranking systems are completely focused on research performance. The ranking systems that have mainly focused on research performance include Center for World University Ranking (CWUR), Leiden Ranking (Leiden), SCIMago Institutions Rankings World Report (SCIMago), Round University Ranking (RUR), The Times Higher Education World University Rankings (Times), University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP), U-Multirank (UMR), and Webometrics.
Notwithstanding their shortcomings, the indicators often used to assess institutional research performance in the ranking systems are numerous and differ from one system to another. The research indicators can be categorised into (a) indicators associated with articles and citations and (b) indicators associated with intellectual property. In their review of the indicators, Vernon, Balas & Momani (2018) found that the indicators associated with articles include a number of articles and other document types (e.g. conference papers, reviews, books and book chapters), a number of citations, a number of articles with external collaboration, a number of articles with international collaboration, a number of articles with industry collaboration, a number/percentage of articles within the top most cited/field, a number of authors from different institutions, a ration of citations per paper, a number of citations from top 10 producers at institutions, the interdisciplinarity of publications, the ratio of citations and papers per staff, industry article citations, and an h-index of institutions. The authors observed that intellectual property indicators used in different ranking systems include the number of patents filed, the patents awarded, the number of publications cited in patents, co-patents with industry, start-ups initiated, research and development (R&D) expenditures, R&D from industry, papers per research income, science and engineering staff, the ratio of R&D to institutional income, reputation survey, and awards by faculty and/or alumni.