World University Ranking: Implication for Library and Information Science Education and Practice

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Date
2019-12
Authors
Musa, Aminu Umar
Musa, Shittu
Musa, Abdullahi I.
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Abstract
University Ranking is a major yardstick for measuring University prestige, attracting students, research funders, this lead many Universities in to making concerted efforts to improve their rankings, with little success. It has been observed that many universities in developing countries did not make it into the world university ranking, (WUR). The aim of this paper is to uncover the challenges militating against universities attaining improved rankings and roles plays by universities library systems in improving the rankings of universities. Content analysis research methodology was adopted for the study; purposive sampling procedure was used, where home pages of four ranking bodies and some documents were considered as sources of data. The finding arising from the study reveals that, most of the ranking bodies studied have similar indicators/criteria in assessing and evaluating the universities; major indicators/criteria were citations, international faculty staff / ratio, academic reputation – teaching quality, research reputation –research volume and focus area and employer reputation. It also discovered that academic library plays a great role in maintaining and upholding the standard of an institution in terms of its academic performance, rankings and prestige among its pairs. It is therefore, recommended that for universities to attend better ranks emphasis should be focus on encouraging staff and students to publish their research output in a world reputable Journal registered with world known bibliometrics (paper/citation metrics) such as Scopus, Thomson Reuters Indexing database, for their work to be present and cited across the globe and many more.
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Post-print Journal article
Keywords
World University Ranking, Library and Information Science Education and Practice
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