The Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities was a ranking system of 500 world universities by scientific paper volume, impact, and performance output. The ranking was published by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT) The project employed bibliometric methods to analyze and rank the scientific paper performance. In addition to the overall ranking, HEEACT publisheda list of the top 300 universities by six fields and ten subjects of science and technology.
Contents
The rankings were introduced in 2007. The original ranking methodology favored toward universities with medical schools. In 2008, HEEACT began publishing a "Field Based Ranking" including six fields: agriculture and environmental sciences (AGE), clinical medicine (MED), engineering, computing, and technology (ENG), life sciences (LIFE), natural sciences (SCI), and social sciences (SOC).
In 2010, HEEACT began publishing subject rankings in fields of various field of science and technology. Science fields are divided into physics, chemistry, mathematics, and geosciences. Technology fields are split up into electrical engineering, computer science, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering (including energy and fuels), materials science, and civil engineering (including environmental engineering).
HEEACT ended the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities Project in 2012. Due to disagreement about ranking results, the Taiwanese education authorities announced that the government would no longer support the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan to do this ranking.
Methodology
The HEEACT rankings used the following criteria:
Quantitative data were drawn from Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). The data were normalized by faculty number to account for different institution sizes. The indicators used in this methodology highly emphasized research quality (80% of the performance score) and short-term research performance (55% of the score).
Commentary
The Australian higher education indicated that the 2007 performance ranking of scientific papers for world universities produced by HEEACT is a useful addition to the present world university ranks because of its rigorous method and robust results, which are made possible by its more modest scope. There are more comments on the HEEACT rankings. The senior research fellow of Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, Wu Yi-shan, claimed that the HEEACT ranking is the best ranking system he has ever seen. Wu indicated that the HEEACT ranking considers both long-term and short-term performance of a university. The idea of combining long-term and short-term ranking indicators is a pioneering thought. Richard Holmes posted on University Ranking Watch and noted: “Although the Shanghai rankings show a high correlation with other rankings (based on a tiny sample of US universities) the HEEACT rankings from Taiwan do somewhat better.” Vice-President Research for the University of Toronto, Professor Paul Young, remarked that “the HEEACT rankings are relatively new, they are an important and methodologically robust measure of the quantity and quality of research performed by universities around the world.” The dean of academic affairs at National Taiwan University, Chiang Been-Huang, stated that “2009 Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities by HEEACT are conducted based on objective figures.”