5 ms·

Top academic institutions in 2018: normalized

57 points by eu 7y ago

mrleiter 7y ago
As an Austrian, I‘m very happy that the just ten year old IST Institute made it to second place. What really sets this institute apart is its lack of departments and thus its organic multi-disciplinary approach and culture. An approach I personally find very fruitful in my social relationships as well, as I learn so much from people who do different things than I do. It‘s enriching in more ways than I imagined.
- nextos 7y ago
  As a non-Austrian doing fairly well at a top university, IST has put Austrian academia in my list of possible next stops and far higher than much more prestigious places. From what I've heard from some fellows, they are doing a really good job at creating a nice academic place sans all the bullshit that comes associated with that lately i.e., politics. Probably a fresh start helped.
  - mrleiter 7y ago
    I wish you all the best!
camjohnson26 7y ago
One potential concern with this normalization is that it could boost institutions with a single world class research group. That group could be pumping out papers while the rest of the school is average.
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
I'm uncomfortable that number of papers was considered part of the quality of the institution as a whole...
- adium 7y ago
  It was published by Nature. The number of papers is the only metric they care about.
option 7y ago
I’ve just finished reading “DNA: the story of a genetic revolution” by J. Watson, Nobel prize winner, who was a long time director of Cold Spring Harbor laboratory (number 1 on that list). It is an awesome and very easy overview of the field which I highly recommend (one of the best books I’ve ever read)
- leftyted 7y ago
  Watson is a very good writer - and funny. I've heard a lot of unsavory things about him but I've also heard that his unique perspective led directly to the climate at CSHL which positioned the lab to be at the center of so many breakthroughs.
  - option 7y ago
    more importantly than a good writer, he is great scientist and scientific leader. It takes a special person to create and/or lead the growth of a team/lab/institution to world-class level. Somewhat reminds me of M. Kelly from Bell Labs
rotskoff 7y ago
This is a fairly bizarre way to rank academic institutions. First of all, the methodology almost entirely neglects computer science because its metric of success is papers published in top tier journals; computer scientists tend to submit to conferences (e.g., NeurIPS) and hence get no credit for their work in this count. However, other fields seem over-represented from the list of journals---this is likely why Cold Spring Harbor, a very good biological lab where probably the vast majority of the papers are published in Nature-approved venues seems to be so elite. The "normalization" they use divides the proportional count of authors that have contributed to an article in the "Nature Index" to the total output of the institution in the sciences, measured by a company called Dimensions. This has the odd effect of penalizing institutions for publishing outside their listed journals. Finally, as an academic, there are some journals on the index that I have published in, but many venues I have published in did not make their cut. Sometimes more specialized journals are necessary---one cannot easily publish, for example, a detailed proof of a theorem in Nature, even if the result is very important. List of journals: https://www.natureindex.com/faq#introduction1 https://www.natureindex.com/faq#introduction1
- consp 7y ago
  I guess you can thus say the list suffers from selection bias and skews small samples which makes it pretty useless but good marketing.
- j7ake 7y ago
  Although it's unfortunate to say, but when one makes a big scientific journal, the inclination is to go to one of the top journals (Nature index) before going to journals outside of the listed journals. The reason behind this is that getting a paper in one of those journals is directly related to academic payoff (prizes, promotions, grants). Viewed from this payoff perspective, reason behind this Nature index isn't so unreasonable. This Nature index would be equivalent to counting the number of papers accepted into the top computer science journals. So yes this index ignores the computer science discipline.
- thanatosmin 7y ago
  The lists, and Nature index, seem like a pretty transparent ploy. Want your institution ranked well? Make sure you publish with us. Departments and institutions already fret over US News rankings. I wonder if we'll see memos encouraging publication in NPG journals if these rankings become regular.
api 7y ago
Not at all surprised to see Brandeis on there.
- gapo 7y ago
  Is Brandeis supposed to be that good ?
hbarka 7y ago
I wonder if a calculation similar to the h-index measure could be used rather than giving each submitted paper equal weight.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

57 points by eu 7y ago

As an Austrian, I‘m very happy that the just ten year old IST Institute made it to second place. What really sets this institute apart is its lack of departments and thus its organic multi-disciplinary approach and culture. An approach I personally find very fruitful in my social relationships as well, as I learn so much from people who do different things than I do. It‘s enriching in more ways than I imagined.

nextos 7y ago
As a non-Austrian doing fairly well at a top university, IST has put Austrian academia in my list of possible next stops and far higher than much more prestigious places. From what I've heard from some fellows, they are doing a really good job at creating a nice academic place sans all the bullshit that comes associated with that lately i.e., politics. Probably a fresh start helped.
- mrleiter 7y ago
  I wish you all the best!

camjohnson26 7y ago

One potential concern with this normalization is that it could boost institutions with a single world class research group. That group could be pumping out papers while the rest of the school is average.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago

I'm uncomfortable that number of papers was considered part of the quality of the institution as a whole...

adium 7y ago
It was published by Nature. The number of papers is the only metric they care about.

option 7y ago

I’ve just finished reading “DNA: the story of a genetic revolution” by J. Watson, Nobel prize winner, who was a long time director of Cold Spring Harbor laboratory (number 1 on that list). It is an awesome and very easy overview of the field which I highly recommend (one of the best books I’ve ever read)

leftyted 7y ago
Watson is a very good writer - and funny. I've heard a lot of unsavory things about him but I've also heard that his unique perspective led directly to the climate at CSHL which positioned the lab to be at the center of so many breakthroughs.
- option 7y ago
  more importantly than a good writer, he is great scientist and scientific leader. It takes a special person to create and/or lead the growth of a team/lab/institution to world-class level. Somewhat reminds me of M. Kelly from Bell Labs

rotskoff 7y ago

This is a fairly bizarre way to rank academic institutions. First of all, the methodology almost entirely neglects computer science because its metric of success is papers published in top tier journals; computer scientists tend to submit to conferences (e.g., NeurIPS) and hence get no credit for their work in this count. However, other fields seem over-represented from the list of journals---this is likely why Cold Spring Harbor, a very good biological lab where probably the vast majority of the papers are published in Nature-approved venues seems to be so elite. The "normalization" they use divides the proportional count of authors that have contributed to an article in the "Nature Index" to the total output of the institution in the sciences, measured by a company called Dimensions. This has the odd effect of penalizing institutions for publishing outside their listed journals. Finally, as an academic, there are some journals on the index that I have published in, but many venues I have published in did not make their cut. Sometimes more specialized journals are necessary---one cannot easily publish, for example, a detailed proof of a theorem in Nature, even if the result is very important. List of journals: https://www.natureindex.com/faq#introduction1 https://www.natureindex.com/faq#introduction1

consp 7y ago
I guess you can thus say the list suffers from selection bias and skews small samples which makes it pretty useless but good marketing.
j7ake 7y ago
Although it's unfortunate to say, but when one makes a big scientific journal, the inclination is to go to one of the top journals (Nature index) before going to journals outside of the listed journals. The reason behind this is that getting a paper in one of those journals is directly related to academic payoff (prizes, promotions, grants). Viewed from this payoff perspective, reason behind this Nature index isn't so unreasonable. This Nature index would be equivalent to counting the number of papers accepted into the top computer science journals. So yes this index ignores the computer science discipline.
thanatosmin 7y ago
The lists, and Nature index, seem like a pretty transparent ploy. Want your institution ranked well? Make sure you publish with us. Departments and institutions already fret over US News rankings. I wonder if we'll see memos encouraging publication in NPG journals if these rankings become regular.

api 7y ago

Not at all surprised to see Brandeis on there.

gapo 7y ago
Is Brandeis supposed to be that good ?

hbarka 7y ago

I wonder if a calculation similar to the h-index measure could be used rather than giving each submitted paper equal weight.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]