A Comparative Evaluation of the World University Rankings Systems

There is a variety of national and international ranking system to assess universities around the world. This research aims to examine similarities and differences between World University Rankings systems and the position of universities in different ranking systems. To examine this issue, top 100 universities of the QS ranking (as one of the famous ranking systems) is extracted and then position of each university in other rankings was investigated. Finally, the Pearson correlation was used to examine relationships. The findings show that there are similarities between the various rankings. The highest relations have been created for result of ARWU (Shanghai) and Webometrics for selected Universities (Rho=0.797). On the other hand, a good relationship has established between ARWU and Times (THE) (Rho=0.723), Scimago (Rho=0.647), Leiden (Rho=0.644).