Researchers sound the alarm on ‘predatory’ rankings – Retraction Watch

Hey, researchers and universities, do you want to be included in a new ranking system? No problem, just pay some money.

Tanvir Ahmed, a post-doctoral fellow at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, says this year has seen an increase in reporting – for example from Bangladesh, Kashmir and Nigeria – of so-called predatory rankings. These are revealed by the lack of knowledge about rankings in universities and the media in some countries, he says.

Ahmed refers to the AD Scientific Index, which charges $ 30 for an individual researcher to be included in the ranking and an unspecified amount for institutions wishing to be ranked.

This is unusual for a ranking, says Ahmed. Typically, university rankings – such as that of Times Higher Education – do not charge universities for their registration. (These rankings have also come under scrutiny.)

“This is clearly a lucrative ploy,” concludes Kyle Siler, a metascience researcher at the University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada, who has previously written about predatory publishing. “It’s a new innovation in predation. “

Whenever such rankings are released, some researchers tend to make a big deal out of it, says Saleh Naqib, a physicist at Rajshahi University in Bangladesh. These rankings have been widely reported in newspapers and widely promoted on social media, adds Naqib, who received his doctorate from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Naqib says rankings become the primary focus in places that don’t have a mature research culture or a strong emphasis on ethical research. “If you don’t really understand bibliographic indexes, you have problems,” he said.

On their website, AD Scientific lists the methodology on its website, explaining that it relies on data from Google Scholar and bases its ranking on nine undisclosed metrics, but it’s unclear which ones are.

Ahmed says the AD Scientific Index does not use the appropriate data to rank scientists and universities, and their methodology has not been explained in any peer-reviewed study.

Naqib and Siler echoed similar concerns. “The rankings are not particularly well done,” adds Siler. “They just use Google Scholar. There isn’t a lot of thought or nuance in it.

Retraction Watch has reached out to Turkey-based AD Scientific Index co-founders Murat Alper from Istanbul Health Sciences University and Cihan Doger from Ankara Bilkent Municipal Hospital for comment, but did not agree. no response.

Ahmed, who is of Bangladeshi descent, fears that the country’s news organizations will not sufficiently review the index numbers before releasing them and that universities will also promote the index when it favors them. “But they don’t know what’s behind the black box.”

Siler says university press offices push these kinds of rankings and newspaper editors jump on those kinds of stories. “It’s easy content for them,” he says. “The public loves horse racing. The public loves contests. The average reader doesn’t quite understand how complex universities are and all they do.

Promoting scientists without scrutiny and diligence can have ramifications when it comes to allocating funds, Ahmed says. This is a legitimate concern, Naqib agrees, as policymakers are increasingly interested in these kinds of rankings. “I think this will influence the allocation of funds,” says Naqib. “The decision-makers are not that well informed and they don’t have that kind of understanding. It is very easy to handle them.

“I think there is a danger that the AD Scientific Index will end up becoming the de facto ranking in many developing countries,” Siler adds.

“Measuring quality is a real challenge,” notes Siler. “I have no problem measuring quality competently with intellectual humility and the necessary caveat that you are trying to quantify something very qualitative. Universities are so complex and cannot be reduced entirely to one number.

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About Mark A. Tomlin

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