Rethinking University Rankings: Rank Aggregation and Multidimensional Approaches for Robust and Responsible Evaluation

University rankings have become highly visible tools for evaluating and comparing higher education institutions, influencing student choices, institutional strategies, reputation, funding, and policy decisions. Global systems such as QS, Times Higher Education, U.S. News, and ShanghaiRanking shape strategic behavior and perceptions of excellence, yet they often differ substantially in their outcomes due to differences in indicator selection, weighting schemes, normalization, and aggregation procedures. The methodological foundations of many ranking systems remain contested: major rankings often rely on fixed-weight composite indicators, arbitrary normalization choices, limited transparency, and strong assumptions about comparability across institutions, disciplines, and national systems. These design choices can substantially affect final positions and may obscure uncertainty, multidimensional performance, and trade-offs across institutional missions such as research, teaching, innovation, and societal engagement. In parallel, growing interest in alternative bibliometric indicators, responsible research assessment, and non-compensatory evaluation methods has highlighted the need for more transparent, multidimensional, and context-sensitive approaches. Rank aggregation and multidimensional ranking offer promising methodological alternatives, including consensus rankings, voting-based procedures, dominance-based methods, score aggregation, partial orders, stochastic and Bayesian models, and multi-criteria decision analysis. However, their theoretical and practical implications for higher education evaluation remain insufficiently explored.

The goal of this Research Topic is to advance the methodological and conceptual foundations of university rankings, rank aggregation, and multidimensional ranking in research assessment and higher education evaluation. Specifically, the Topic aims to examine how rankings are constructed, how methodological assumptions shape institutional positions, and how aggregation and multidimensional approaches can provide more transparent, robust, and policy-relevant alternatives to conventional composite-score systems. Multidimensional ranking approaches are especially relevant where institutional performance cannot be meaningfully reduced to a single scalar value without loss of important structure or oversimplification.

A further goal is to foster dialogue between scholars working in scientometrics, bibliometrics, information science, operations research, decision science, multi-criteria decision analysis, ranking theory, higher education studies, and science policy. Through this interdisciplinary exchange, we seek to identify frameworks that reduce arbitrariness, better represent multidimensional institutional performance, and support more responsible uses of rankings in institutional strategy, benchmarking, and public communication. The Topic is particularly timely given ongoing debate on the limitations of conventional bibliometric and evaluation systems, including substantial differences across major global ranking frameworks and increasing calls for more responsible and methodologically sound approaches to assessment. Ultimately, the Topic aims to move the debate from ranking as a simplistic league table toward ranking as a methodological and decision-support problem requiring rigor, transparency, contextual interpretation, and awareness of uncertainty.

This Research Topic welcomes theoretical, methodological, empirical, and policy-oriented contributions that critically examine university ranking systems and advance work on rank aggregation and multidimensional ranking in higher education and research evaluation. This Topic focuses on the methodology of ranking itself, specifically rank aggregation, multidimensional approaches, and multi-criteria decision analysis applied to institutional and system-level evaluation. Contributions centered on the design or critique of individual bibliometric indicators (such as the Impact Factor, H-index, Altmetric, or disruption score), without engaging with aggregation or multidimensional ranking methodology, fall outside the scope of this Topic. Contributions should also remain grounded in research assessment and responsible evaluation; purely technical ranking exercises without connection to evaluation practice, or general critiques of university reputation systems unrelated to assessment methodology, similarly fall outside the scope of this Topic. Relevant themes include, but are not limited to:

• Comparative analyses of major university ranking systems
• The construction, comparison, validation, and reform of rankings
• The role of bibliometric and non-bibliometric indicators
• Indicator selection, normalization, and weighting effects; methodological biases and cross-system inconsistencies
• Aggregation methods for combining rankings, indicators, partial orderings, or expert judgments
• Robustness, sensitivity, and uncertainty analysis
• Dominance-based, voting-based, Bayesian, and multi-criteria approaches
• Field-normalization and cross-country comparability issues
• Responsible research assessment and the unintended consequences of rankings
• Applications to institutional benchmarking, science policy, and strategic management.

Contributions may focus on global rankings, national systems, subject rankings, or institutional benchmarking frameworks, and may address both methodological innovation and practical implications for evaluation and decision support.

We welcome the following manuscript types: Original Research, Review, Methods, Brief Research Report, Perspective, and Conceptual Analysis.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: university rankings; rank aggregation; multidimensional ranking; research assessment; bibliometric indicators; multi-criteria decision analysis; composite indicators; robustness analysis; higher education policy; scientometrics

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.