Ten principles for the responsible use of university rankings

University rankings are controversial. There is a lot of criticism on well-known rankings such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), commonly referred to as the Shanghai Ranking, and the World University Rankings of Times Higher Education (THE) and QS. Nevertheless, universities often feel that they are under pressure to show a good performance in these rankings and universities may therefore pay considerable attention to these rankings in their decision making.
Today the 2017 edition of our CWTS Leiden Ranking was released. We use this opportunity to make a statement on appropriate and inappropriate ways of using university rankings. More...