Abstract
Despite a number of imperfections and weaknesses, the existing world university rankings are the only serious attempt so far to identify, assess and measure the quality at the international level. Moreover, their methodology and data collection techniques are gradually improving and as they have been updated every year, they also provide important and valuable comparisons over time.
However, to make fast and simple conclusions only based on ranking results is mostly misleading and even dangerous, although very tempting especially for politicians. Positions of individual universities can be understood only with a good knowledge of evaluation methodology.
It is necessary to look not only at overall results, but also at other less visible aspects of the methodology and the ways how they have been arrived at. Discussions about world universities rankings, their relevance and use receive a new impetus every year when the most significant of them are gradually released during August-October.
The following study describes and analyses the results and methodologies of the four world's top rankings. The first one is the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) whose results for the year 2012 (their tenth anniversary edition) were published on 15 August 2012.
The second one is the QS World University Rankings (QS) whose latest results were published on 11 September 2012 in Dublin. The third one is the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE) that announced their current results on 3 October 2012.
As the fourth ranking the SCImago Institutions Rankings (SCImago) has been added. Although it is not profiled as a classical ranking it serves as a very useful database of information on scientific and research activities of universities.