Citations per faculty
Find out all you need to know about Scopus, how citation counts are compiled and how faculty numbers are used to generate this important indicator
Citations, evaluated in some fashion to take into account the size of institution, are the best understood and most widely accepted measure of research strength. Often calculated on a "per paper" basis, the THE - QS World University Rankings has adopted a "per faculty member" approach since its inception in 2004. The Citations per Faculty score contributes 20% to the overall rankings score.
For the calculation of this indicator, QS gathers two distinct datasets:
- Total citation count for the last five years
There are three major sources of pubication and citation data worldwide, these are the Web of Science from Thomson Reuters; Scopus from Elsevier and Google Scholar. In the first three years of the THE - QS World University Rankings, results from the Essential Science Indicators (ESI), a subset of the Web of Science were used. In 2007, the switch was made to Scopus for a number of reasons, but principally due to broader journal coverage leading to results for a larger number of institutions. - Full Time Equivalent (FTE) faculty
Faculty numbers used are totals... whilst it would be ideal to separate the notions of teaching and research and use the former for calculating the Student Faculty Ratio and the latter for this indicator, it has not been possible to do so as data to that degree of distinction has so far proved unavailable for many countries in the study. The definition of exactly what data we request has evolved gradually over the years to minimize ambiguity.
2008 citation counts are based on a version of Scopus dated 23rd June.
Scopus is a rapidly evolving system, data included in the THE - QS export may differ significantly from the current content of Scopus online.
Many commentators have suggested that, given the accepted validity of citations, this measure should carry a significantly higher weighting than it does. Ultimately, however, this places extremely strong emphasis both on medical and life sciences and on intitutions from countries where the principal medium of instruction is English.
Whilst it has its critics, the Academic Peer Review places equal emphasis on Arts and Social Sciences as it does on Natural and Life Sciences. This is its great strength and, above all, the reason why it carries such a high weighting.
At time of writing, Scopus is working to add more books to its index, which ought to help in less scientific fields ad QS and Times Higher Education continue to seek alternative measures to evaluate outputs from lower citing disciplines.
Frequently Asked Questions: Citations per Faculty
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Why do citations only count for 20% of the overall score?
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Whilst other ranking projects hae set forth more specificaly to evluate universities purely in terms of their scientific output, the Times Higher Education - QS World University Rankings were devised with bolder ambitions - to evaluate universities "in the round".
In order to achieve that, alternatives to sciences-biased citations indicators needed to be found and emphasized in this system. The Academic Peer Review treats Arts and Sciences even-handedly.
Category: Methodology: Citations -
Why do the rankings use five years of citations data?
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In the early years the ranking used ten years of data from the Essential Science Indicators (ESI). Feedback suggested that this lengthened the time it takes for an excellent, dynamic and productive, but young institution to reveal its excellence in the rankings. Since results are published annually, it is important to recognise contemporary excellence. Citation dynamics varyby subject, however, so it is possible in the future that the length of the citation window will differ by subject or faculty area.
Category: Methodology: Citations -
Why does the citation count for a given university not exactly match the count for the corresponding years in Scopus?
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Scopus is a constantly evolving system, bith in terms of function and content. The export taken for the rankings is a snapshot of the five years in question taken on a given date. Since journals, papers and citations are added frequently and in some cases, retrospectively, even historical numbers can change.
In addition, QS does a lot of work on the raw data to fond alternative name variants for institutions and invites institutions to supply these variants directly - aggregating their esults together even if they are treated distinctly in Scopus.
Category: Methodology: Citations -
Why do paper and citation counts vary so much year on year?
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Late in development of the 2007 rankings, this ranking project moved from using the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) from Thomson Reuters to Scopus from Elsevier. A bibliometric database of this size is vastly complex and given the file sizes involved, processing can take days. Much improvement has been made to the algorithms used to retrieve data between 2007 and 2008, eliminating double counting between disciplines and double counting between different affiliations that are ultimately attributed to the same intitution.
In many cases, this has resulted in dramatically reduced overall paper and citation counts in 2008 (and beyond). The dataset overall, however, carries a correlation co-efficient of 0.96 with 2007 and 0.93 with 2006 (where data from ESI were used). As a result, whilst the raw data may be quite different, the final scores ought to be fairly similar, depending on changes in staffing levels.
Category: Methodology: Citations -
What is the definition of research assistant that is utilized by QS?
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The important distinction for us is that staff counted as ‘research only’ should be academically involved in that research and should be likely to publish research outputs.
A research assistant, in our understanding, is any individual who is not doing own research and is therefore not likely to publish own research outputs. Said individual is (only) involved in research in terms of operation execution , such as lab technician or equipment operator. -
What is Full Time Equivalent (FTE)?
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Full –Time Equivalent (FTE) is the total number of full-time entity it would take to meet the commitments currently met by both the full-time entity and the part-time entity. If there is no part-time entity, then FTE figure is equal to the headcount figure. (Entity in this case refers to either academic staffs or students).
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Why do we need Full Time Equivalent (FTE) figures?
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The purpose of using Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) is to counter any bias universities that either have a very high or very low number of part-time students or staff.
Universities around the world have slightly different interpretations of what FTE means, but all of them are providing calculations or educated estimates that make more sense than purely using a headcount number.
As a verification guideline, we would generally expect the FTE figure to sit somewhere between the full-time headcount and the total headcount. FTE figures which are utilized to compile the rankings.
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How are Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) figures calculated?
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Figures/ headcounts calculated here are based on a full academic year.
The following is the formula for FTE used by QS:
FTE Estimate = Full-Time Headcount + 1/3 of Part-Time Headcount
Headcount is basically the number of heads.
To visualize the example:
No. of Full-time students: 10,000 headcounts
No. of Part-time students: 4,000 headcounts
No. of Full-Time Academic Staff: 5,000 headcounts
No. of Part-Time Academic Staff: 0 headcounts
Results:
FTE for Students = 10,000 + (1/3 of 4000) = 11333.33
FTE for Academic Staff = 5,000
Please note that a student can be represented more than once as an FTE.
If a student is taking a full-time program and a part-time program, he/she will be counted into the Full-Time Headcount AND Part-Time Headcount.
News: Citations
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