Jubilating over ‘Quack Webometrics’ Rankings is Why Dr. UN Scammed the University — Researcher slams UG
MyNewsGH
Jan 2, 2023 8:34 AM
A Researcher has called out University of Ghana for Jubilating over what he described as “fake, quack rankings” by Webometrics which no serious institution factors in its plans.
Webometrics after considering 89 Tertiary schools officially released their best in Universities in Ghana with University of Ghana on top. According to them, indicators used for the ranking were Presence, Impact, Openness, and Excellence.
But Researcher Richard Apau believes “no serious University” will jubilate over Webometrics ranking because it lacks credibility.
According to him, the lack of due diligence by UG is why Dr. UN famously scammed the management of the University with a fake award.
“For a university that claims to be the best, research as a basis of verifying facts and establishing credibility and validity of publication must be a topmost priority. But no. Anything that says they are first, they just grab and make noise. It is no surprise, that their Vice-Chancellor received fake award from the popular DR UN without due diligence.” He wrote.
He added: “Webometrics has no credibility in University ranking. It uses a flawed methodology. It purports to use algorithm to rank Universities. Its ranking is based on three criteria appearance in searches, Number of Citations and number of publications. The joke is even that, this Agency says the number of times the university appears in internet searches forms 50% of its ranking. It only allocates 10% to external citations. This ranking Agency doesn’t even care where papers are published. Publications in predatory journals are considered. Plagiarized publications are all considered.”
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I have never imagined how low the standard could be for this university, until I saw this poster celebrating quackery ranking by a body that has no credibility in global university rankings.
For a university that claims to be the best, research as a basis of verifying facts and establishing credibility and validity of publication must be a topmost priority. But no. Anything that says they are first, they just grab and make noise. It is no surprise, that their Vice-Chancellor received fake award from the popular DR UN without due diligence.
Webometrics has no credibility in University ranking. It uses a flawed methodology. It purports to use algorithm to rank Universities. Its ranking is based on three criteria appearance in searches, Number of Citations and number of publications. The joke is even that, this Agency says the number of times the university appears in internet searches forms 50% of its ranking. It only allocates 10% to external citations. This ranking Agency doesn’t even care where papers are published. Publications in predatory journals are considered. Plagiarized publications are all considered.
Times Higher Education which started rankings in 1971 has robust approach. Similarly other credible agencies like QS World University Rankings and Academic Ranking of World Universities all have similar approaches and mechanisms that avoid forum shopping as a means of ranking universities.
For instance, The Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings is the only measurement evaluating universities for teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook. THE uses thirteen performance metrics to identify world-class universities. These evaluation metrics are then combined into the following five groups: Teaching (30%) Research (30%): a reputation survey, and measures research income and research productivity Research citations (30%) International outlook (7.5%): measuring the proportion of international students and staff and international collaboration Industry income (2.5%): measuring how much research income an institution earns from industry against the number of academic staff it employs.
Also , QS World University Rankings is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds. It evaluates university performance according to the following six metrics: Academic reputation (40%) – a global survey of more than 94,000 academics Citations per faculty (20%) – a ‘citation’ means a piece of research being referred to (cited) within another piece of research. Student-to-faculty ratio (20%) – the number of academic staff employed relative to the number of students enrolled Employer reputation (10%) – a global survey of close to 45,000 graduate employers International faculty ratio (5%) International student ratio (5%)
In the last university rankings, THE ranked University Of Cape Coast (UCC) as first in both Ghana and West Africa. Since Yaanom are celebrating their 75th Anniversary and have nothing to show aside being the university that has produced the highest number of unemployed graduates, they decided to take consolation in fake rankings
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And their most talkative professor went to town with it.
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