NATIONAL UNIVERSITY RATING AND ASSESSMENT SYSTEMS IN THE BRICS COUNTRIES: Current status, approaches and key challenges

According to open sources, by the end of 2022, Islamic Republic of Iran had 2,183 higher education institutions, but currently the country is being reformed by way of merging universities, which would bring the number down to 400.

Since 2006 Islamic Republic of Iran higher education institutions have a national ranking system, powered by Islamic World Science & Technology Monitoring and Citation Institute, ISC. The institute is affiliated with Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural, ICESCO and was established in 2008 at a meeting of ministers of science and higher education under the auspices of ICESCO. ISC was is the main scientometric system of the Islamic world (like WoS and SCOPUS), to index and assess scientific publications in four languages – English, French, Persian and Arabic.

Currently, ISC has been preparing three international university rankings: global ranking, D-8 university ranking – for universities of the ISC founding countries (Bangladesh, Arab Republic of Egypt, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey), and ISC Islamic World Universities Ranking. Methodologies of all the three ratings are similar. The model includes five groups of indicators:

• Research: scientometric indicators of scientific publications and citations based on ISC data
• Education: students to faculty staff ratio, faculty staff with high citation rates of scientific publications
• International activities: international joint projects, share of countries participating in international joint projects, international reputation, refuting share
• Innovations: share of registered patents and industry collaboration

These ratings, firstly, focus on university R&D and innovation activities, secondly, they are based mainly on scientometric indicators

ISC’s Proposal on «BRICS University Ranking Criteria and Indicators» comprises the following criteria:

1. Education (criterion’s weight 30%):
   • Human resources – Ratio of students to faculty members
   • Outstanding faculty – No of Stanford Top 2% Scientists and top 1% based on ESI
   • Outstanding scientific achievement – List award won by academic staff and alumni
   • Students’ competitiveness – Amount of students wins in international students contests
2. Research (criterion’s weight 30%):
   • Research Volume
   • Times Cited
   • Impact Relative to World
3. Technology and innovation (criterion’s weight 15%):
   • Innovation – No. of patents, according to WIPO
   • Technology collaboration – Percent of Industry Collaborations
4. S&T Diplomacy (criterion’s weight 15%):
   • Science Diplomacy – International Collaborations
   • S&T Diplomacy – University’s share in total Internet publications
5. University & Society (criterion’s weight 10%):
   • Web presence – Total pages of University’s website indexed by leading search engines
   • Social relevance – University website search