The ranking of Iranian universities based on an improved technique

Current competitive environment has forced higher education authorities to rank the scientific performance of their universities. The results of the university rankings have been used in strategic planning of research affairs. Focal point behind the university ranking is the methodological issues. Previous university rankings have relied on the conventional methods that are accompanied by some drawbacks. Therefore, the present study aims to evaluate Iranian universities based on the Crown indicator. The performance of fourteen Iranian universities was evaluated based on the data gathered from Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database. Results of the world university rankings do not indicate the true positions of the universities that can be attributed to the combined methods. Findings show that the older and larger sized Iranian universities, notwithstanding their enormous publications and citations, have lower research impact performance compared to relatively newer and smaller universities. Furthermore, employing a normalized mechanism [such as Citation per Publication (CPP)/ Mean Field Citation Score (FCSm)] in rankings provide better results useful for strategic decisions in universities. Using the ranking results from normalized data, using new sets of metrics, smaller and newer Iranian universities could attract larger resources, better quality faculties and students to strengthen stronger national and international collaborations