The opportunities for the UNU to compare its work to that of other universities are few and far between. As such, I was very excited to see that the UNU has been included in the webometrics ranking of world universities. The purpose of these rankings is to assess the global performance and visibility of the universities.
According to the Cybermetrics Lab based in Spain, who compile the rankings, the focus is not only “on research results but also on other indicators which may reflect better the global quality of the scholar and research institutions worldwide.”
So how well does the UNU perform? According the results released in January 2008, the UNU is now ranked at number ten in Japan (up from 12 in 2007) and 483 in the world (up from 498 in 2007). This is extraordinary for a universities with just over 350 staff.
The original aim of the rankings was to support Open Access initiatives that facilitate improved electronic access to scientific publications and to other academic material. These are goals that align closely to those of the UNU and ones that we hope to promote further in the future (for instance through the new UNU Opencourseware portal).