Page 121 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

120 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.12, 2020

Therefore, rankings resemble a game based on different indicators and weights.

1.2 Data

We collected and computed data of the top 100 universities from UK QS World University Rankings
2020. ESI papers are collected from the InCites Essential Science Indicators (https://esi.clarivate.com)
with the time span from 2010 to 2019. We calculate the number of Nature and Science papers from
2010 to 2019 based on the Web of Science (http://apps.webofknowledge.com), including articles,
reviews and letters. And the number of Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine are from
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation).
We also collected data of university libraries respectively. International data come from the
ARL statistics (https://publications.arl.org/ARL_Statistics/) and domestic data from the Academic
Libraries Consulting Committee of the State Education Department (http://www.scal.edu.cn).
Although ARL statistics have been updated to 2018-2019, the latest open access report is only
available for the year of 2013-2014. In order to compare domestic and foreign differences, it is
necessary to ensure that the content of the quantitative indicators is comparable, so we chose total
collections, overall expenditures and staff number, all of which are very essential indicators in
library statistics. Some lacked data are complemented by universities’ and their libraries’ websites.
The data with an asterisk are calculated based on publicly available information.
The ranking reference systems include ARWU and UK QS for synthetic criterion rankings, as well
as Nature index and Nobel laureates for single indicator rankings. Table 2 lists the top 10 ranked
universities during recent years, where the Nobel laureates include physics, chemistry and medicine.

Table 2. Typical university rankings top 10
Synthetic criterion system Single indicator system
ARWU(1) UK QS(2) Nature index Nobel laureates(5)
2019 2020 2020 2021 2019(3) 2020(4) 2018 2019
Harvard Harvard MIT MIT Harvard Harvard Harvard Harvard
Stanford Stanford Stanford Stanford Stanford Stanford Cambridge Cambridge
Cambridge Cambridge Harvard Harvard MIT MIT UC Berkeley UC Berkeley
MIT MIT Oxford Cal Tech Tokyo USTC Columbia Columbia
UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Cal Tech Oxford Cambridge Oxford Cal Tech Cal Tech
Princeton Princeton ETH ETH ETH PKU Chicago Chicago (62)
Oxford Columbia Cambridge Cambridge PKU Tokyo MIT MIT (62)
Columbia Cal Tech UCL ICL Oxford Tsinghua Stanford Stanford
Cal Tech Oxford ICL Chicago Tsinghua NJU Oxford Oxford
Chicago Chicago Chicago UCL UC Berkeley Cambridge Cornell Cornell
Data sources:
http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2020.html.
https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/world-university-rankings/top-universities-world-2021.
https://www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2019/institution/academic/all.
https://www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2020/institution/academic/all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation.