| Abstract: |
This paper addresses the question: should the world’s top universities be led
by top researchers, and are they? The lifetime citations are counted by hand
of the leaders of the world’s top 100 universities identified in a global
university ranking. These numbers are then normalised by adjusting for the
different citation conventions across academic disciplines. Two statistical
measures are used -- Pearson’s correlation coefficient and Spearman’s rho.
This study documents a positive correlation between the lifetime citations of
a university’s president and the position of that university in the global
ranking. Better universities are run by better researchers. The results are
not driven by outliers. That the top universities in the world -- who have the
widest choice of candidates -- systematically appoint top researchers as their
vice chancellors and presidents seems important to understand. There are two
main areas of contribution. First, this paper attempts to use bibliometric
data to address a performance-related question of a type not seen before (to
the author’s knowledge). Second, despite the importance of research to
research universities -- as described in many mission-statements -- no studies
currently exist that ask whether it matters if the head of a research
university is himself or herself a committed researcher. Given the importance
of universities in the world, and the difficulty that many have in appointing
leaders, this question seems pertinent. |