title: Severe language effect in university rankings: particularly Germany and France are wronged in citation-based rankings.
abstract: We applied a set of standard bibliometric indicators to monitor the scientific state-of-arte of 500 universities worldwide and constructed a ranking on the basis of these indicators (Leiden Ranking 2010). We find a dramatic and hitherto largely underestimated language effect in the bibliometric, citation-based measurements of research performance when comparing the ranking based on all Web of Science (WoS) covered publications and on only English WoS covered publications, particularly for Germany and France.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Anthony F J
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: van Raan
authors.forename: Thed N
authors.initials: TN
authors.lastname: van Leeuwen
authors.forename: Martijn S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Visser