Page 118 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

LI Yuhai, JIN Zhe, LI Jiahui & LI Jue / Five questions in the construction of smart library in China 117

Rankings never really quantify contributions: A

quantitative and qualitative study on universities and
their libraries

1
2*
1
1
Shelia X. WEI , Ronda J. ZHANG , Howell Y. WANG , CAO Cong & Fred Y. YE 1〇a *
1 International Joint Informatics Laboratory & Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Data Engineering and Knowledge Services,
School of Information Management, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
2 Nottingham University Business School, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, 315100, China

Abstract
By comparing quantitative ranking with qualitative contributions, we reveal that academic assessment
has to put real contributions ahead of quantitative indicators and that rankings have nothing to do
with universities’ and their libraries’ true values. The greatness of a university lies in its impacts on
the progress for human knowledge and the promotion for social development. Although ranking
of universities by way of quantitative indicators can reflect some information, we should pay more
attention to qualitative contributions.

Keywords
Academic contribution, Research library, University rankings

0 Introduction

In various university rankings that continue to emerge, the most famous are produced by the

US News & World Report (Morse, & Flanigan, 2007), UK QS (Lane, 2021) and the Academic
Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) (http://www.shanghairanking.com/). Rankings could
satisfy different needs for different social groups. They may help students in selecting a university
to attend, help universities in understanding their international competitiveness, and help
governments in allocating academic resources. While initially just a business reference, now the
university ranking has been widely perceived as an equivalence to university assessment, which
is questionable and dubious. We argue that such quantitative rankings of universities never mean
a qualitative assessment of the contributions of the universities ranked. Although we begin our
discussion of the university ranking, we are looking for a university’s real contribution as well as
its academic assessment and beyond (Lehmann, Jackson, & Lautrup, 2006; Lane, 2010), including
a similar assessment on the university library.
Generally, there are two types of university rankings, one with a synthetic criterion such as those

* Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to C. C. (email: cong.cao@nottingham.edu.cn) and F. Y. Y. (email:
yye@nju.edu.cn).