University rankings are "hot". Some universities, policy makers and jo urnalists seem to take them quite seriously. At the same time, however , they are also fiercely criticized. The best known worldwide rankings tend, for instance, to have a strong anglo-saxon bias and tend to giv e insufficient valorisation to human sciences. Are improvements and al ternatives possible? Should universities care about rankings and let t hem influence their practices? Parallel to international rankings, res earch assessments have become increasingly important in several countr ies. What are the current practices of research evaluation? What are t he challenges, obstacles and advantages? How should one assess the qua lity of research in a fair and equitable way? In this book a number of leading European experts share their thoughts and research findings on these issues. The approach of existing globa l university rankings is clearly unsatisfactory but this does not mean that all ranking exercises are pointless. Furthermore, we simply cann ot afford to ignore the need for research assessment if we want to uph old quality standards at our higher education institutes. Merely relyi ng on bibliometrics is problematic - even if we can overcome the curre nt anglo-saxon bias in citation indices. Both research evaluation stra tegies as rankings endeavours have most to gain from a multiple criter ia approach. |