Visibility in international rankings. Strategies for enhancing the competitiveness of Spanish universities

The Students’ Attitude to the Social Environment of the University: Cross-Cultural Aspect

“…At present, the understanding of educational service is being transformed; it includes not only the provided educational product, but also the characteristics of the environment in which it is provided (Barlett, 2011;Buela-Casal, 2007;deFilippo, 2012). The students' (consumers of educational services) requirements increase both for the quality of educational products, and for the social environment of the universities, this promotes not only the acquisition of knowledge, but also improving the quality of students' life during their studies at the university, and the role of the social component is reinforced with the development of the standard of living in country.…”

“…The subject matter of the current researches in the field of international competitiveness of the universities mainly covers the construction of international universities' rankings (Buela-Casal, 2007;deFilippo, 2012;Filinov, 2002;Liu, 2005;Merisotis, 2005;Merisotis, 2005). Not enough attention is given to sorting out and analyzing the factors affecting the international competitiveness of the universities.…”

“…International competitiveness of the universities, the factors determining it, including the social environment of the universities, is analyzed in the following works (Aghion et al, 2010;Buela-Casal et al, 2007;deFilippo et al, 2012;Dill et al, 2005;Filinov et al, 2002 ;Glänzel et al, 2002;Li et al, 2005;Harvey, 2008;Liu et al, 2005;Merisotiset, 2005;Mohrman, 2013;Mok et al, 2011;Mok, 2014;Rodionov et al, 2014;Yaşar et al, 2012;Yonezawa et al, 2002). The works of Barlett, 2011 cover the studying of students' catering as an element of the social environment.…”

University excellence initiatives in Spain, a possible strategy for optimising resources and improving local performance

“…As prior studies showed, although the size of an institution is important, it is not sufficient to achieve a qualitative leap (De Filippo et al, 2012).…”

A Comprehensive Comparison of Educational Growth within Four Different Developing Countries between 1990 and 2012

“…Because, they are also the fundamental criteria to rank universities. Factors such as number of publications (Bas, Dayangac, Yaprak, Yuzer, & Tokat, 2011;Gholizadeh et al, 2014;Zhao, 2005), citation number (Ale Ebrahim et al, 2013;Sweileh, Zyoud, Al-Jabi, & Sawalha, 2014), international collaboration (Mohammadhassanzadeh et al, 2010;Zhai, Yan, Shibchurn, & Song, 2014), the number of postgraduate students and researchers (Inglesi-Lotz & Pouris, 2013;Moed & Glänzel, 2004), number of academic staff (De Filippo, Casani, Garcia-Zorita, Efrain-Garcia, & Sanz-Casado, 2012;Ibanez, Larranaga, & Bielza, 2013) are the most important ones. In this regard, Web of Science (WoS) and SCImago are the most popular databases used to capture and measure the number and quality of academic publications and provide strong databases to support this information (Aghaei Chadegani et al, 2013;Basu, 2010;Chirici, 2012).…”