An equity-oriented rethink of global rankings with complex networks mapping development

Abstract

Nowadays, world rankings are promoted and used by international agencies, governments and corporations to evaluate country performances in a specific domain, often providing a guideline for decision makers. Although rankings allow a direct and quantitative comparison of countries, sometimes they provide a rather oversimplified representation, in which relevant aspects related to socio-economic development are either not properly considered or still analyzed in silos. In an increasingly data-driven society, a new generation of cutting-edge technologies is breaking data silos, enabling new use of public indicators to generate value for multiple stakeholders. We propose a complex network framework based on publicly available indicators to extract important insight underlying global rankings, thus adding value and significance to knowledge provided by these rankings. This approach enables the unsupervised identification of communities of countries, establishing a more targeted, fair and meaningful criterion to detect similarities. Hence, the performance of states in global rankings can be assessed based on their development level. We believe that these evaluations can be crucial in the interpretation of global rankings, making comparison between countries more significant and useful for citizens and governments and creating ecosystems for new opportunities for development.

Territorial bias in university rankings: a complex network approach

“…The system consists of 92 institutions of diversified size and educational target. The Italian university rankings examined in our research are compiled by CENSIS 64 , with the aim of providing a guideline to the choice of future students. Due to the target, these rankings evaluate aspects that have a relevant impact on the quality of students’ academic experience, such as the service provision, scholarship and structure availability, communication through digital instruments, internationalization, and employability of graduates.…”

“…Moreover, recent studies are endowing the complex network toolbox with new instruments, such as multilayer networks 59 and network potentials 60 , 61 . Complex network methods have already been applied to the problem of ranking analysis, to formalize the detection of competitiveness patterns among sport teams 62 and universities 63 , and to encompass multifaceted context-based information in the evaluation of performances achieved by countries 64 .…”

Sustainable development goals: conceptualization, communication and achievement synergies in a complex network framework

“… 2018 ), performance evaluation (Bellantuono et al. 2020 ), neuroscience (Sporns 2011 ; Amoroso et al. 2018 , 2019 ; Bellantuono et al.…”

Economic Interplay Forecasting Business Success

“…Our analysis of complex economic ecosystems belongs to a research area, known as science of success, that is currently gaining considerable relevance [15]. is emerging sector of complex system analysis exploits the increasing availability of data to explore patterns that underlie success in diverse areas, such as international country rankings [16], scientific publications [17], grant proposals [18], sports competitions [19], and patents [20]. e science of success investigates the impact of certain universal procedures such as partnership, mentoring, collaboration, or innovation, on the success of different initiatives, with the aim of identifying a number of common good practices, applicable in different contexts.…”