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The purpose of this paper is to discuss ranking factors suitable for library materials and to show that ranking in general is a complex process and that ranking for library materials requires a variety of techniques.

The relevant literature is reviewed to provide a systematic overview of suitable ranking factors. The discussion is based on an overview of ranking factors used in web search engines.

While there are a wide variety of ranking factors applicable to library materials, today's library systems use only some of them. When designing a ranking component for the library catalogue, an individual weighting of applicable factors is necessary.

While the paper discusses different factors, no particular ranking formula is given. However, the paper presents the argument that such a formula must always be individual to a certain use case.

The factors presented can be considered when designing a ranking component for a library's search system or when discussing such a project with an ILS vendor.

The paper is original in that it is the first to systematically discuss ranking of library materials based on the main factors used by web search engines.

Universitas Terbuka (UT) aims at achieving a world class standard. As one of the criteria of a world class university is the world ranking, it is planned that the university should achieve a high position within the ranking. At present, the ranking systems are the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) and Times Higher Education Supplement (THES). Positions of open universities in world university ranking are in the lower tier, both according to the THES and SJTU. However, ranking have a positive impact toward universities. Hence, it is possible that through the effort of achieving a high ranking, UT will have the benefit of improving its quality of services toward its stakeholders. If it is possible that ranking system criteria also fits the achievement of quality, there should be an advantage of gaining a high position in world ranking for UT. Therefore the question is how to improve the position of an open university within the international university ranking. Although the main priority of UT mission is to provide access of quality education to those who for some reason cannot attend conventional education, UT has opportunities for improving its rank among world university ranking. The advantage of the ranking is that it can support the effort to become a world class university. UT should improve international cooperation, both in teaching and research, while the research activities should be improved, both in its quality and its publications in accredited international journals. Lastly, the effort for achieving a high position in world ranking should not ignore the main mission of UT to provide access to education.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the value of the media rankings of business schools from the perspective of students, business schools and the media.

The paper analyses the rankings given to various schools by various publications.

The media rankings give the perception that there are more significant differences between similar MBA programs than actually exist. Indeed, many times it is the arbitrary weighting assigned by the media to the variables in the ranking rather than the quality of the school that accounts for differences across similar programs. A more accurate description of quality would be obtained by rating schools in groups of programs of similar quality.

Business school applicants can utilize media rankings to identify the top 100 MBA programs but should not base their decision between different programs on a specific ranking of one school relative to another. Rather, the applicant should examine the raw data behind the ranking, along with many other non‐quantitative factors, in assessing which is the program best matches their particular interests and aspirations.

The paper's aim is to design and describe a new mathematical ware instrument allowing to facilitate group decision-making process with feedback.

The aim is achieved through the development of a method for achieving sufficient consistency of individual expert alternative rankings based on evolutionary algorithms. The method is targeted at minimizing the number of times the experts in the group are addressed.

The method developed and described in the paper allows to provide sufficient consistency level of individual expert rankings allowing to aggregate the rankings into a transitive preference relation.

The method is targeted at small expert groups. The method is limited by psycho-physiological constraints of human (expert's) mind, which is unable to analyze more than seven objects simultaneously.

The method can be used in different scopes of human activity requiring ordinal expert estimation.

The method is based on an original approach to organising feedback with experts. Genetic algorithm is used to determine the optimal candidate among the experts to be addressed at every feedback step.

The paper seeks to describe the rationale behind the Financial Times business school rankings and some of the problems inherent in developing and publishing them.

The rationale behind the Financial Times business school rankings is discussed, as are the ways in which business schools use the rankings.

Business schools have an ambivalent relationship to business schools rankings, openly criticising them but using favourable aspects of the rankings in their schools' marketing.

Business school rankings are probably here to stay. Most business schools are developing ways of using them for their own purposes.

Ranking relevant journals is very critical for researchers to choose their publication outlets, which can affect their research performance. In the management information systems (MIS) subject, many related studies conducted surveys as the subjective method for identifying MIS journal rankings. However, very few consider other objective methods, such as journals’ impact factors and h-indexes. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this paper, top 50 ranked journals identified by researchers’ perceptions are examined in terms of the correlation to the rankings by their impact factors and h-indexes. Moreover, a hybrid method to combine these different rankings based on Borda count is used to produce new MIS journal rankings.

The results show that there are low correlations between the subjective and objective based MIS journal rankings. In addition, the new MIS journal rankings by the Borda count approach can also be considered for future researches.

The contribution of this paper is to apply the Borda count approach to combine different MIS journal rankings produced by subjective and objective methods. The new MIS journal rankings and previous studies can be complementary to allow researchers to determine the top-ranked journals for their publication outlets.

The purpose of this research is to determine the competitive advantages of higher education institutions (HEIs) and create a new methodology to rank universities according to the competitive advantages.

The research determines the competitive advantages of HEIs by analysing expert opinions through a semi-structured interview form, matches codes and themes to performance indicators using Saldana's two-cycle coding methods, evaluates content validity through Lawshe and reveals the item weights of the ranking with analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Simple additive weighting (SAW) and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity (TOPSIS) methods were used for ranking universities.

Seven dimensions stand out in regard to what should be considered while ranking HEIs: research and publication, education, management, infrastructure, financial resources, human resources and social and economic contribution. Under the 7 dimensions, 69 indicators were determined.

The research provides a scientific reference point where HEIs can compare themselves with other HEIs regarding where they are in the sector, especially in terms of competitive advantages.

Although there are many different ranking methods that rank universities in the national and international literature, almost all these methods are largely based on the outputs of the university such as the number of publications, the number of patents, the number of projects, etc. A framework which ranks universities by considering different aspects of the institution, such as management, human resources and financial resources, has not been developed yet. In this respect, this research aims to fill this gap in the literature.

Given the importance of third-party endorsements as external cues during purchase evaluations, the manipulation of endorsements may raise consumers’ suspicion and thereby reduce the effectiveness of marketing messages. Consumers find it increasingly difficult to distinguish between authentic and biased brand reviews. This research conducts two experiments regarding brand rankings of third-parties in four industries. Study 1 aims to probes the interaction effect of persuasion knowledge and fairness of rating method (fair vs. unfair) on brand rankings’ credibility and brand image enhancement. Study 2 examines the interplay of dispositional persuasion knowledge and reputation of third parties (high vs. low).

This research builds on an analysis of data (Study 1, N = 122; Study 2, N = 123) from Taiwan, where brand rankings held by third-party organizations are regular. The hypotheses were tested using SPSS’s PROCESS macro.

Drawing on previous research of persuasion knowledge, the authors find that a fair rating method and a high reputation of third-party organization can mitigate the negative effect of persuasion knowledge.

The results of this research suggest that marketers need to manage third-party endorsements carefully. Consumer skepticism toward these endorsements (e.g. third-party’s brand rankings) can be weakened when persuasion attempt is considered appropriate.

This is one of the first efforts to empirically explore the influences of persuasion knowledge on third-party endorsements. The importance of this work is underscored by the fact that a growing number of third-party endorsements are sponsored or even manipulated by brand owners.

The purpose of this research is to explore the objectivity and reliability of Entrepreneur Magazine's Franchise 500^® ranking system.

Using data from 1997 to 2004 rankings, regression analysis was used to determine the extent to which key variables explained the rank of franchise firms.

Several quantifiable measures, categorized by the publishers as “most important” or “important” to a firm's rankings, were found to have little or no explanatory power in the regression model. Longitudinal analysis revealed inconsistencies in the ranking among the top 100 ranked franchises, which question the ranking system's reliability.

Only a subset of the variables used to calculate the rankings are disclosed by the publisher, yet these variables explain a substantial portion of any given franchise's rank. Only the top 100 ranked firms were included in the study.

While considered to be important to a firm's rank, the amount of pending litigation and the percentage of terminations within the system, found to be indicators of conflict between franchisor and franchisees, appear to have little effect on a franchise's rank. Also, size of the franchise system appears to have a strong but inconsistent relationship with rank, both within any given year and over the time period covered by this study. Lastly, the relationship between growth rate and rank, another factor considered by the publisher to be most important, also appears inconsistent, both in terms of number of outlets added and percentage of growth attained over the previous year.

Due to the wide popularity of the ranking system by practitioners and researchers a more systematic examination of the ranking appears justified to understand the underlying research implications of franchising research as it relates to the Franchise 500.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between university rankings and sustainability reporting among Australia and New Zealand universities. Even though sustainability reporting is an established area of investigation, prior research has paid inadequate attention to the nexus of university ranking and sustainability reporting.

This study covers 46 Australian and New Zealand universities and uses a data set, which includes sustainability reports and disclosures from four reporting channels including university websites, and university archives, between 2005 and 2018. Ordinary least squares regression was used with Pearson and Spearman’s rank correlations to investigate the likelihood of multi-collinearity and the paper also calculated the variance inflation factor values. Finally, this study uses the generalized method of moments approach to test for endogeneity.

The findings suggest that sustainability reporting is significantly and positively associated with university ranking and confirm that the four reporting channels play a vital role when communicating with university stakeholders. Further, this paper documents that sustainability reporting through websites, in addition to the annual report and a separate environment report have a positive impact on the university ranking systems.

This paper contributes to extant knowledge on the link between university rankings and university sustainability reporting which is considered a vital communication vehicle to meet the expectation of the stakeholder in relevance with the university rankings.