FEATURED NEWS
Global Ranking Agency Rates UniPort 2nd In Nigeria By Williams Wodi
- Details
- Published: 27 June 2018
Another cheering news came the way of the University of Port Harcourt last week as a reputable global rating agency known as University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP), placed the University in second position in Nigeria. URAP also rated the University 1,755 in World Ranking for the 2017/2018 evaluation period.
The award letter signed by the Director of Graduate School of Informatics, Professor Deniz Bozsahin, disclosed that the ranking was based on academic quality and number of publications from the University during the period under review.
Professor Bozsahin further revealed that, “URAP annually gathers data on about 4,000 Higher Education Institutions (HEI) with highest number of publications to rank them by their academic performance. Once initial processing of the raw data for the 4,000 HEIs is complete, the top 2,500 of them are scored. URAP covers more than the top 10 per cent of all HEIs in the world, which makes it one of the most comprehensive university ranking systems in the world.”
According to the statement, URAP ranking is completely based on objective data obtained from reliable bibliometric sources. The ranking of top 2,500 world universities is based on six academic performance indicators, in which high impact publications constitute the basis of the ranking methodology. It is predicated on quality and quantity of publications and international research collaboration performance which are used as indicators.
The indicators included data sources and duration of articles, citation, total documents, total articles impact, total impact of citation impact and international collaboration, among others.
Said Professor Deniz, “URAP is a Non-profit organisation with intention to help universities identify areas of progress with respect to specific academic performance indicators. Similar to other ranking systems, the URAP system is open to new ideas and improvements.” The award certificate was jointly signed by Professors Ural Akbulut and Nazife Baykal on behalf of URAP.
In his reaction to the ranking, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ndowa Lale, praised scholars in the University for publishing in high-impact journals, urging others who were yet to embrace the new mode of knowledge generation and consumption to do so if they did not wish to be left behind. “In today's knowledge environment, it is important for scholars to showcase their research on available global platforms to gain visibility for themselves and their institutions. I wish to express gratitude to our colleagues who appear on the Google Scholars platform and other reputable avenues. Gone are the days when researchers worked alone without collaborating with their colleagues in other climes to exchange ideas,” Professor Lale said.
