Core research areas
The journal welcomes work examining how evidence is collected, interpreted and used in higher education. Contributions should explain their context and avoid treating a single metric as a complete account of institutional quality. Critical and comparative studies are encouraged.
- University rankings, league tables and institutional evaluation
- Bibliometrics, scientometrics and research assessment
- Higher education governance, policy and organizational change
- Quality assurance, accreditation and institutional effectiveness
- Teaching, student success, equity and access
- Research collaboration, science diplomacy and internationalization
- Sustainability, societal contribution and knowledge transfer
- Artificial intelligence, digital transformation and data governance
Approaches and contribution
Empirical work should describe its research design, population, sampling, measures and analysis. Conceptual work should make its argument and its relationship to existing scholarship explicit. Methods papers should disclose assumptions and, where feasible, provide material needed to reproduce the analysis.
- Institutional, regional, national and cross-national studies
- Reproducible analyses, simulations and methodological critiques
- Qualitative inquiry and comparative case studies
- Policy analysis, systematic reviews and scholarly perspectives
Scope boundaries
The journal does not accept promotional institutional profiles presented as research, unsupported ranking claims, purchased endorsements or manuscripts that conceal material limitations. A favorable result for an institution is not an acceptance criterion. Authors should identify the scholarly question and the evidence supporting their conclusions.