ISSN 0147-6882, Scientific and Technical Information Processing, 2009, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 229–233. © Allerton Press, Inc., 2009. Original Russian Text © V.A. Markusova, A.I. Tsygankova, T.A. Krylova, 2009, published in Nauchno-Technicheskaya Informatsiya, Seriya 1, 2009, No. 8, pp. 13–17. 229 Higher education is a principal component of the development and prosperity of a country. The processes of globalization are exerting a substantial influence on the system of higher education and promoting an increase in the competition between universities of dif- ferent countries for the most talented youth and highly qualified teaching staff. Growth in the inflow of stu- dents into universities has been observed in the world since the 1990s, particularly from the countries of the Asian continent. The competition between universities of different countries for foreign students is simulta- neously increasing, since education generates income. The system of Russian higher education has been passing through a transformation since the disintegra- tion of the Soviet Union. The deficiency of financial resources, departure of young teachers and talented stu- dents to foreign countries, and aging equipment do not promote an increase in the quality of education. Mean- while, Russian universities are generally much more qualified in the post-soviet era as regards teaching staff and technical potential than their partners from the CIS-countries are. Therefore, the entrance to Russian universities is the dream of many pupils from these countries. According to the opinion of professor Leydesdorff, who is one of the most famous specialists in scientom- etry, a significant increase of society’s attention to rat- ings of universities as objects for evaluating the role of these universities in the world community has been observed [1, 2, 3]. Different interests are bound with the need to carry out annual ratings of universities. In the West, where education is paid for by the students (and can be very expensive, as in the United States, or less expensive, for citizens of Europe), a university’s rank in a global rating is a way of attracting additional resources. Both human and financial resources can serve as such resources, viz., the attraction of more tal- ented students and professors, additional financing, wider notice of a university’s activities in mass media. University ratings permit specialists responsible for a country’s scientific policy to compare national univer- sities with universities of other countries by competi- tiveness. This is an important factor for scientific policy in the era of the former Soviet Union for our country. The most famous ratings of universities are the national ratings of the United States, the US News and World Report and world ratings; the most authoritative Britain rating, Times Higher Education Supplement (QS-THES); the Shanghai Rating; the Taiwan Rating; and the webometric rating performed by the Spanish laboratory of webometrics 1 . The global rating of uni- versities, made by the highly influential Center for Sci- ence and Technology Studies (CS teaching staff), was presented for the first time in 2008. The global rating of universities, made by the Russian agency ReitOR, was also presented in February 2009. The indices of scien- tific productivity (the quantity of articles published by the teaching staff of a university and frequency of their citation) are an important constituent of an average- weighted estimate in all these ratings, except the Webo- metrics rating. These indices have become a rather con- venient indicator for comparative analysis and an impe- tus for universities to achieve higher positions with a decrease in expenditures. 1 It is rather difficult to show the webometric activities of our uni- versities, if outdated information is present, even on the website of MSU: a telephone number with the area code for Moscow (095), which was changed to (495) several years ago. The Indices of Scientific Productivity and Ratings of Domestic Universities. V. A. Markusova, A. I. Tsygankova, and T. A. Krylova Received May 12, 2009 Abstract—This paper discusses the different worldwide ratings of universities, viz., the British, Shanghai, Tai- wanese, and Russian ratings. The indices of scientific productivity and citation of the teaching staff (teaching staff) of universities, reflected in the Web of Science, Essential Science Indicators, Journal Citation Reports, or SCOPUS DBs, are noted to be an important component of these ratings. It is emphasized that the structure of domestic science significantly differs from the structure of science in other countries of the world, where sci- ence is carried out predominately at universities. The increasing necessity for domestic universities to be found in global ratings imposes a number of new tasks on the librarian and scientific-information service of teaching staffs. Key words: rating, universities, scientific productivity, frequency in citation, impact-factor. DOI: 10.3103/S0147688209040066