“Of course, we would like to see other institutions follow this”, says Jeroen Bosman, a librarian at Utrecht University. | Image: zVg

Universities love to boast about their place in the international rankings. But these lists are also often the object of criticism on account of their lack of transparency and for being supposedly one-sided. Utrecht University in the Netherlands has this year drawn the consequences and has ceased providing any statistics to Times Higher Education, which is responsible for the rankings. On its website, the University writes: “Rankings put too much stress on scoring and competition, while we want to focus on collaboration and open science”.

According to a tweet on X by Jeroen Bosman, the subject librarian for geosciences at Utrecht University, this is logical in view of previous measures that the university has taken. “Of course, we would like to see other institutions follow this”, he told the journal Science Business. Their decision was welcomed by Monika Steinel, the Deputy Secretary General of the European Universities Association. However, she also said: “Whether this is the beginning of a trend, I wouldn’t be able to say”.