University rankings good for academic research
What you need to know:
- The change in normal academic research landscape necessitated a revolutionary change to technological innovations like online data collection, teaching and other technological based approaches to generate and communicate knowledge.
The recent 2022 published world, continental and individual country’s Webometrics University rankings has yet revealed shocking revelations on the state of universities research and innovations worldwide.
According to Wikipedia a free online encyclopedia Webometrics Ranking of World Universities also known as Ranking Web of Universities, is a ranking system for the world’s universities based on a composite indicator that takes into account both the volume of the Web content and the visibility and impact of these web publications.
Whereas the previous rankings were done under ideal normal circumstances, this was not the case this time round due to onset of Covid-19 pandemic that set almost all world nations and their education systems in recurrent lockdowns .Some resultant effects of this lockdown was an adverse effect on the field of research and innovation by universities.
The change in normal academic research landscape necessitated a revolutionary change to technological innovations like online data collection, teaching and other technological based approaches to generate and communicate knowledge.
In most developing nations there was a high demand for internet that caused high internet resulting into slow internet connections. This abrupt change however favoured many universities that were already on paths of relying heavily on technology spaces for research and dissemination of knowledge.
The rest of the categories whose management and staff were reluctant to embrace new technology were left struggling to adjust themselves in this quick global trend.
No wonder the latest webometrics ranking seem to have depicted backward and forward racing of some universities on the webometrics scale of best and least good universities! The findings of this research revealed yet the dominance western universities in the world rankings taking with Harvard University scooping first place worldwide.
In my opinion, all universities still have the obligation to invest in necessary infrastructures to support research and innovation by use of modern technological innovations faced with the current and future pandemics and other natural disasters. In the interest of this call, I would like to propose the following recommendations:
•Governments should ensure that the cost for accessing internet is heavily subsidised for learning institutions
•Universities need to vigorously provide continuous avenues for staff trainings regarding use of technology in research and knowledge sharing spaces
•A library is still a one stop center for university lecturers and students. Whereas online libraries are accessed at any time, it’s high time all universities have their libraries open 24 hours. Sometimes a researcher may get an insight of an idea to research one or two hours past midnight. Why must such a person wait up to morning 9 am to enter a library to accesses relevant text books? It’s indeed a big shame to find libraries closed on weekends and night hours. This has immensely affected university research.
•Research and innovation seed funds should be deliberately set aside and made available to university lecturers by their respective universities. Research is a costly venture and once reasonable funding is not provided, a lot of objectives may not be met that may gradually water down the quality of research output by universities.
Universities have an obligation to provide research outputs for guiding government policies worldwide. Without any strong research output base, many risk being branded what some commentators have named, ‘Glorified high schools’. I believe taking into account the above recommendations, this tragedy can be ably avoided.
John Vianney Ahumuza, Lecturer, Uganda Christian University & PhD Student University of Ghana, Legon
