Three from ten for UK psychology

Three UK Universities have been ranked in the top 10 in the world for psychology. The QS World University Rankings by Subject placed Cambridge second, Oxford fourth and University College London ninth.

The rankings are based on four factors; academic reputation and employer reputation, where academics and employers are asked which institutions they see as excellent either for research or for the recruitment of graduates. The other two factors are citations per paper and H-index, which measures the productivity and impact of the published work of scientists.

Professor Trevor Robbins (University of Cambridge) questioned whether H-Index and citations per paper were actually measuring independent factors. He said: 'Naturally, we are happy to see that we have retained our ranking in this year's QS ratings. We are especially pleased that the newly merged Department of Psychology now represents the diversity of the subject, for example from social to psychobiological areas. We would be interested to learn more about the precise criteria and the relative weightings of the four main factors that are being used by QS to compute these ratings. Doubtless, different criteria and weightings would lead to different outcomes.'

Five other UK Universities also made it into the top 50 in the rankings, among them Kings College London - up from 28^th place last year to 22^nd this year. Professor Shitij Kapur, Dean and Head of School at the Kings Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, said he was delighted at the result. He added: 'It is notable that we have risen so dramatically in the QS World Rankings even before we start our brand new BSc in Psychology this September. We expect that this innovative course will further strengthen our reputation as a centre of excellence for psychology education and see us climb even higher in the rankings in future years.'

Biophysicist and pharmacologist David Colquhoun (University College London) had taken to social media to express concerns over the metrics used in such rankings, asking 'who benefits from university rankings?' and 'how are they payed for and how are they monetised?' He told us they were 'statistically illiterate', adding: 'They depend on totally arbitrary weightings of several quite different inputs. Rankings are also published with no indication of errors, something that no journal would ever allow. Goldstein and Spiegelhalter showed in 1996 that the uncertainty in rankings is large, but they were ignored. It's not in the commercial interests of publishers to reveal how unreliable the rankings are.'