ARWU Experts Gave Tips on KFU's Advancement in Their Rankings

Company representatives Jingwen MU and Renee ZHU held a presentation and a Q&A session on September 28th.

Kazan University has not yet appeared in the rankings but has commissioned a report on its current position there, so this meeting was a logical follow-up to the consultations. Rector Ilshat Gafurov and Vice-Rector Marat Safiullin were moderating.

ARWU, also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is different from the well-known QS and THE in some very important ways. For instance, it uses third-party sources exclusively and concentrates only on academic and research parameters.

“A university doesn’t have to apply to participate in the rankings. We monitor information from open sources and are proud that anyone can use the same data and make the same conclusion”, said Ms. Mu. She also mentioned that the methodology hasn’t changed since day one.

Kazan University, as she noted, has advanced significantly since first appearing in the database in 2013, - by 238 positions. She recommended paying more attention to publication quality and trying to push top authors into the high citation rankings. Nobel/Fields laureates also make a significant contribution to the advancement, but there don’t seem to be such prospects for the University in the nearest future.

The audience showed interest in this info, and some lab heads asked questions.

Renee Zhu gave comments on a presentation with KFU’s current indicators. She admitted that financing is big part of success, although there is no direct correlation between them in the current rankings, at least when it comes to Russian universities.

The Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s delegation will spend two more days at KFU. They will contribute to subject-specific roundtables with more clarifications on ARWU and its benefits for the institution.