Beyond university rankings? Generating new indicators on universities by linking data in open platforms
本文批评现有大学排名的方法论缺陷，提出通过整合开放平台数据生成更细粒度、可交叉引用的新指标，并以欧洲大学为例展示可行性，对政策制定者和高校管理者有参考价值。
The need for new indicators on universities is growing enormously. Governments and decision makers at all levels are faced with the huge opportunities generated by the availability of new knowledge and information and, simultaneously, are pressed by tight budget constraints. University rankings, in particular, are attracting policy and media attention, but at the same time receive harsh methodological criticism. After summarizing the main criticisms of rankings, we describe 2 trends in the user requirements for indicators; namely, granularity and cross‐referencing. We then suggest that a change in the paradigm of the design and production of indicators is needed. The traditional approach is one that not only leverages on the existing data but also suggests heavy investment to integrate existing databases and to build up tailored indicators. We show, based on the European universities case, how the intelligent integration of existing data may lead to an open‐linked data platform which permits the construction of new indicators. The power of the approach derives from the ability to combine heterogeneous sources of data to generate indicators that address a variety of user requirements without the need to design indicators on a custom basis.