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faq.html
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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
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<head>
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<title>FAQ - CSRankings: Computer Science Rankings</title>
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<h1>FAQ Computer Science Rankings</h1>
<div class="panel panel-info">
<div class="panel-heading">
<p>
Frequently asked questions for <a href="http://csrankings.org">CSRankings.org</a>.
</p>
<div class="row">
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<div class="table">
<table class="table-sm table-striped">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />Why another ranking? Why this methodology?
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
Rankings are intensely popular and
influential. While we might wish for a
world without rankings, wishing will not
make rankings go away.
</p>
<p>Given this state of affairs, it makes
sense to aim for a ranking system that
is meaningful and transparent. Unfortunately, the most influential
rankings right now are those from US
News and World Report, which is entirely
reputation-based and <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/science-schools-methodology">relies
on surveys sent to department heads and
directors of graduate studies.</a>
</p>
<p>
By contrast, CSRankings is entirely
metrics-based: it weighs departments by
their presence at the most prestigious
publication venues. This approach is
intended to be both incentive-aligned
(faculty already aim to publish at top
venues) and difficult to game, since
publishing in such conferences is
difficult. It is admittedly bean-counting,
but its intent is to "count the right
beans." It is also entirely transparent;
all code and data are publicly available
at <a href="https://github.com/emeryberger/CSRankings">
https://github.com/emeryberger/CSRankings
</a> under a <a rel="license"
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">Creative
Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
4.0 International License</a> (note: this
means you may not distribute anything built from
CSrankings' code or data).
</p>
<p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />How about incorporating citations?
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
Unfortunately, citation-based metrics have
been repeatedly shown to
be <a target="_blank"
href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.0638">subject</a>
to <a target="_blank"
href="http://evaluation.hypotheses.org/files/2010/12/pdf_IkeAntkareISSI.pdf">manipulation</a>. There
are <a href="http://retractionwatch.com/2017/08/22/one-way-boost-unis-ranking-ask-faculty-cite/">universities
instructing faculty</a> to cite each
other, and the phenomenon
of <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/13/citation-cartels-science/">"citation
cartels"</a> is well documented.
</p>
<p>There are also methodological challenges:
citations for all papers are not freely
available and change rapidly, and citation
count systems like Google Scholar do not do
a great job of disambiguating
authors <em>and</em> can be gamed by
authors. (See <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qGuYgMsAAAAJ&hl=en">Et
al.'s</a> page for a humorous example.)
</p>
<p>Note that selective conferences are
already a proxy for citation impact:
papers published at these conferences are
on average much more highly cited than
papers that appear in less selective, less
prestigious venues.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />What do <em>adjusted counts</em> and <em>average counts</em> mean?
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p><b>Adjusted counts</b>: each publication is counted
exactly once, with credit adjusted by splitting evenly
across all co-authors. This approach makes it impossible to
boost rankings simply by adding authors to a paper.
</p>
<p>
<b>Average count</b> is the geometric mean
of the adjusted counts per area (for n areas selected, this is the nth
root of the product of all adjusted counts (+ 1)).
$$averageCount = \sqrt[N]{\prod_{i=1}^N(adjustedCounts_i + 1)}$$
<em>This
computation implicitly normalizes for publication rates and sizes of
areas.</em>
</p>
<p>
Note that publications must be at least 6 pages long to be counted.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />
How were research areas determined?
<br />
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
Nearly all categories are based on
research-focused <a href="http://www.acm.org/special-interest-groups">ACM
SIGs</a>. Areas not represented by ACM
SIGs are intended to span <em>most</em>
established research-centric areas of
computer science.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />Why is (some area) not included?<br />
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
For any research-focused area to be
included, at least 50
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_in_the_United_States#Universities_classified_as_.22R1:_Doctoral_Universities_-_Highest_Research_Activity.22">R1
institutions</a> must have publications in the
top conferences in that area in the last 10 years.
This threshold is to ensure that there is
enough research activity in an area to
enable a meaningful ranking. A number of ACM
SIGs do not meet this criteria.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />
How were the conferences selected?
<br />
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
The conferences listed were developed in consultation
with faculty across a range of
institutions, including via community surveys.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />Why so few conferences per area?<br />
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
Only the very top conferences in each area
are listed. All conferences listed must be
roughly equivalent in terms of number of
submissions, selectivity and impact to
avoid creating incentives to target less
selective conferences.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />Why is conference X not listed?<br />
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
Additional
conferences are not listed when they
are not roughly equivalent to the rest.
This selection is generally uncontroversial
but in some communites has been established by surveying
recent program committees from their indisputably top conference(s).
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />How is authorship count adjusted?
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
A single faculty member gets 1/N credit for a paper, where N is the
number of authors, regardless of their affiliation or status (faculty,
student, or otherwise). The number never changes. A paper can count
for at most 1.0, in the case that all authors are / end up becoming
faculty in the database.
</p>
<p>
The key downside to counting papers
without adjusting for authors is that it
would make it trivial to inflate the
effect of writing a single paper simply by
adding authors. Splitting authorship
credit means that authors are incentivized
to
appropriately <a href="http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/policy_on_authorship">treat
authorship credits</a>. Note that
publication rates are normalized across
areas.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />How about adjusting the count only by faculty in the database (or some other means)?
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
Here are some of the
numerous downsides of only including
authors present in the database:
<ul>
<li>Authorship counts would be difficult
to calculate (manually).</li>
<li>Authorship counts would be dynamic
(that is, they would change over
time). When an author dies and is no
longer in the database, everyone else
would have to have their credit
increased (talk about perverse
incentives).</li>
<li>It would create an incentive
for senior faculty to have their junior
collaborators not get tenure (since they
would then likely leave the
database).</li>
<li>It would favor collaboration with
industry (not in the database) over
collaboration with academics. Note that
companies do not
generally provide public access to their
employee directories.</li>
<li>It would create a disincentive for
faculty to see their students get
faculty appointments (since it would
reduce credit).</li>
</ul>
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />What are the criteria for including faculty?
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
The criteria for inclusion are that anyone who is a full-time,
tenure-track faculty member on a given
campus <em>who can <b>solely</b> advise PhD
students</em> in Computer Science can be
included in the database. This approach
thus extends the reach of the database to
a number of faculty from other departments
who have adjunct appointments with a CS
department or similar that let them advise
CS PhD students. Note that full-time means an at least 75% appointment for
the entire academic year.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />What about including faculty from ECE, Informatics, etc.?
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
As mentioned above, tenure-track faculty
who can advise PhD students in CS can be
included regardless of their home
department. The primary audience of
CSRankings is prospective graduate
students who are seeking a postgraduate
degree in Computer Science.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />Why isn't <em>(prestigious science journal A)</em> included?
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
CSrankings uses DBLP as its data source,
and DBLP does not currently index general
science journals (including Science, Nature,
and PNAS).
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<p><br />How can I submit change requests (to add faculty, change home pages, change affiliations, etc.)?
</p>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>
<em>Submit a pull request</em> for
the <a href="https://github.com/emeryberger/CSRankings">CSrankings GitHub repo</a>.
<a href="https://github.com/emeryberger/CSrankings/blob/gh-pages/docs/CONTRIBUTING.md">More details<//a>, <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-pull-request-on-github">tutorial on pull requests here</a>.
</p>
<p>
Make sure that faculty members' names correspond to
their <a href="http://dblp.uni-trier.de/search/">DBLP</a>
author entries.
<b>Please
also read <a href="https://github.com/emeryberger/CSrankings/blob/gh-pages/docs/CONTRIBUTING.md">this
guide to contributing</a> before
submitting any proposed changes.</b>
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
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