An article in University World News by Wagdy Sawahel has reviewed a paper published in the Journal of Technology Transfer, by Chiara Alberti, Alice Civera, Eric E Lehmann, Michele Meoli, Jonah Otto, and Stefano Paleari, and included in preprint form in Research Square.
The study concerns the UI GreenMetric Ranking, which is published by Universitas Indonesia and ranks over 1400 universities according to their performance on six sustainability criteria: Settings and Infrastructure, Energy and Climate Change, Waste, Water, Transportation, and Education and Research.
A co-author of the study told University World News that there were problems with the rankings with regard to their emphasis on quantitative indicators, self-submitted institutional data, and transparency.
The study analysed papers about the GreenMetric rankings published between 2013 and 2024 and found that most of them took a positive view of the rankings and that the authors were usually affiliated to universities that participated. It also noted that papers were disproportionately concentrated among a few journals such as Sustainability, the Journal of Cleaner Production, and the International Journal of Technology.
The paper and the article suggest that the papers about GreenMetric showed a bias towards the rankings and participating universities.
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