Page 126 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

Shelia X. WEI, Ronda J. ZHANG, Howell Y. WANG, CAO CONG & Fred Y. YE / 125
Rankings never really quantify contributions: A quantitative and qualitative study on universities and their libraries

real contributions to knowledge progress and social services.

3 Discussion

The above results suggest that quantitative indicators fail to reflect real contributions of universities
and their libraries. Some rankings of university and their libraries do exist (such as Ranking of
library academic ability), but rankings never quantify real contributions.
However, quantitative indicators also represent some concise information, but we need to know
universities in both quantities and qualities. Same to their libraries, we need to know not only
volumes of books, but also the quality of the books. Similarly, the quality of cultural atmosphere is
also an important factor in the global diversity beyond our discussion.

4 Conclusion

In this article, we concisely reveal and illustrate that what makes a university great is its
contributions to human knowledge and cognitive progress, which in turn enrich knowledge and
benefit society (Cole, 2010). This is key to academic assessment and has policy implications for
aspects such as funding allocation. University ranking is one thing, and how much a university
contributes to new knowledge is quite another. Rankings never quantify real contributions or
greatness of universities, which also fits to university libraries.
We hope that the ideas contained in this article can be inspiring for academic evaluation,
especially for ranking and assessment of universities and their libraries, and then stimulate follow-
up research in the future.

Author contributions

S. X. W. and H. Y. W. collected data, S. X. W. and R. J. Z. processed data and wrote the paper, C.
C. designed the research and revised paper and F. Y. Y. initiated the idea and wrote the paper.

Additional Information

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China
Grants Nos. 71673131 and 71774091.