ABSTRACT
University rankings are models of higher education systems. Modeling is a common activity in Data Analytics, and university rankings are one well-known activity of Research Analytics. Universities have a good idea about their performance even without the metric barrage of rankings, and many universities are exceptionally valuable in ways that rankings do not capture. Media and ranking agencies are institutions that determine much of a university's brand and are therefore critical to a university's interinstitutional strategy. Rankings are models of higher education reality. The major trends to watch that are affecting these models are world university rankings (WUR), regional rankings, national rankings, subject rankings, beyond-research rankings, alternative metrics, quantitative versus qualitative assessment, and research social networks. This chapter shows the Bibliometric databases on which Research Analytics is built. Both quantitative and qualitative assessment will be part of university rankings in the future. Generating quantitative metrics will be subsidized by ever-growing data capture and storage facilities.
