VSU climbs to 17th spot, a new all-time high in its Webometrics ranking

Visayas State University starts the year strong as it lands an all-time high of 17th place in the January 2022 edition of the Webometrics ranking of Philippine universities.

Setting a new record, this is now VSU’s highest rank to date after taking 18th spot in the January 2019 edition while also sliding down one notch lower last year in the July 2021 edition.

This progress is mainly attributed to the number of citations attributed to top researchers and scientists of VSU for the past year plus the increase in web content brought about by continued publication of news and feature stories in the VSU website.

Webometrics, a brainchild of The Cybermetrics Lab, is considered the largest academic ranking of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with analysis of performance even at the country level. Now in its 18th year of publication, this ranking system includes more than 31,000 universities and colleges worldwide.

To ensure a rigorous assessment, the Webometrics algorithm utilizes rating systems sourced from notable and world renowned think-tanks like Ahrefs Majestic, Google Scholar, and Scimago respectively.

Visibility, transparency, and excellence are the three key indicators used in the Webometrics ranking system.

Visibility was mainly measured on an institution’s web presence and web content impact that constitutes 50% of the cumulative score, where VSU garnered 8,447 points and ranked 22nd nationwide.

Meanwhile, top-cited researchers and number of citations as rated by Google Scholar contributed 10% to the accumulated institutional score of VSU where the university was evaluated as top 11 in the Philippines after obtaining a score of 4,493 points in the transparency metric.

Lastly, 40% of the overall score was factored from Scimago’s full database of 27 disciplines that included an analysis of top cited papers and the number of citations attributed to the university. In this indicator, VSU scored 7,190 points and ranked 22nd in the excellence metric tying with many other universities and colleges in the Philippines.

With its current standing, VSU is the lone university in Eastern Visayas to enter the top 50 list. However, Samar State University (SSU), Eastern Visayas State University (EVSU) and Leyte Normal University (LNU) made it to the top 100 cut for this edition.

Among the 297 institutions evaluated in the country, the University of the Philippines (UP) system topped the Philippine web rankings followed by the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD) and Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU).

VSU President Edgardo E. Tulin expressed his delight in the improved rankings of VSU in the web rankings of universities and colleges in the country. He then encouraged VSU faculty to continue publishing scientific papers in indexed journals to continue improving the standing of the university in different ranking systems.

“It’s clear that with many ranking systems that are being introduced now, the most important indicator has always been on research productivity in terms of the number of published articles and how many times they are cited. I hope that our researchers here in VSU are taking note of this trend so that we can be consistent with our standing as one of the very few research universities in the country,” Dr. Tulin explained.

The VSU administration has long implemented a generous incentive system to recognize publication performance of VSU faculty members and researchers especially in high impact journals. This policy encouraged greater research productivity for the university since its implementation in 2013.

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