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Long-term university research rankings based on publications in the top five economics journals
Commercial university ranking systems have existed since the early 2000s, with multiple studies having been conducted using various metrics to rank universities over time. However, these studies are usually performed on merely a decade's worth of data at a time. This dissertation conducts long-term...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English English |
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School of Economics
2026
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| _version_ | 1869483656548974592 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Johnson, Mathew |
| author2 | Georg, Co-Pierre |
| author_browse | Georg, Co-Pierre Johnson, Mathew |
| author_facet | Georg, Co-Pierre Johnson, Mathew |
| author_sort | Johnson, Mathew |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | Commercial university ranking systems have existed since the early 2000s, with multiple studies having been conducted using various metrics to rank universities over time. However, these studies are usually performed on merely a decade's worth of data at a time. This dissertation conducts long-term university rankings from 1940 to 2010, utilising the information provided from the top five economics journals identified in a publication by Combes and Linnemer (2010), and demonstrates how these metrics have evolved. A database of papers is created to perform this long-term ranking by downloading all the publications in the top five economics journals using a web scraper called Aaron's Kit (Chembezi, Oldnall & Van Zyl, 2021). The information from the papers is extracted from the PDFs using optical character recognition. Finally, the data is cleaned using fuzzy string matching and string replacements, with the remaining data points being filled in using Scopus and Amazon Mechanical Turk. To produce a ranking, a weighted count of authors and affiliations is applied. These rankings are presented over time to observe changes from 1940 to 2010. The rankings are then compared to similar studies that use more complex ranking methodologies, with the results yielded being very similar. This suggests that a more complex solution may not produce better ranking results. The top-ranked universities from this study are Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in that order. It is found that author collaboration on papers has increased from an average of 1.14 authors per paper in the 1940s to 1.98 authors per paper in the 2000s. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/43354 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | English eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-07-01T04:02:28.191Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| publishDateRange | 2026 |
| publishDateSort | 2026 |
| publisher | School of Economics |
| publisherStr | School of Economics |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/43354 Long-term university research rankings based on publications in the top five economics journals Johnson, Mathew Georg, Co-Pierre University rankings research economic journals Commercial university ranking systems have existed since the early 2000s, with multiple studies having been conducted using various metrics to rank universities over time. However, these studies are usually performed on merely a decade's worth of data at a time. This dissertation conducts long-term university rankings from 1940 to 2010, utilising the information provided from the top five economics journals identified in a publication by Combes and Linnemer (2010), and demonstrates how these metrics have evolved. A database of papers is created to perform this long-term ranking by downloading all the publications in the top five economics journals using a web scraper called Aaron's Kit (Chembezi, Oldnall & Van Zyl, 2021). The information from the papers is extracted from the PDFs using optical character recognition. Finally, the data is cleaned using fuzzy string matching and string replacements, with the remaining data points being filled in using Scopus and Amazon Mechanical Turk. To produce a ranking, a weighted count of authors and affiliations is applied. These rankings are presented over time to observe changes from 1940 to 2010. The rankings are then compared to similar studies that use more complex ranking methodologies, with the results yielded being very similar. This suggests that a more complex solution may not produce better ranking results. The top-ranked universities from this study are Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in that order. It is found that author collaboration on papers has increased from an average of 1.14 authors per paper in the 1940s to 1.98 authors per paper in the 2000s. 2026-06-23T07:03:23Z 2026-06-23T07:03:23Z 2026 2026-06-23T06:59:13Z Thesis / Dissertation Masters MPhil http://hdl.handle.net/11427/43354 en eng application/pdf School of Economics Faculty of Commerce University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | University rankings research economic journals Johnson, Mathew Long-term university research rankings based on publications in the top five economics journals |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | Long-term university research rankings based on publications in the top five economics journals |
| title_full | Long-term university research rankings based on publications in the top five economics journals |
| title_fullStr | Long-term university research rankings based on publications in the top five economics journals |
| title_full_unstemmed | Long-term university research rankings based on publications in the top five economics journals |
| title_short | Long-term university research rankings based on publications in the top five economics journals |
| title_sort | long term university research rankings based on publications in the top five economics journals |
| topic | University rankings research economic journals |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/43354 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT johnsonmathew longtermuniversityresearchrankingsbasedonpublicationsinthetopfiveeconomicsjournals |