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This paper critically analyses the effects of predatory publishing as a major contributor to misinformation and disinformation amongst academicians and learners in developing countries. The paper notes that predatory publishing poses a major hindrance in the struggles to enhance academic excellence. This paper established that predatory publishing has great consequences in the spread of misinformation and disinformation amongst academicians and Learners in Developing Countries. Some of the reasons that necessitate the increase in predatory publishing in developing countries are; the lack of proper policies or guidance on where research articles should or should not be published, the failure to embrace open access initiatives for visibility and dissemination of research outputs so as to discourage academic malpractice and unethical behaviors, lack of funds, poor or limited information literacy among other factors. The paper is unique in that it comprehensively analyses the concept of predatory journals with misinformation and disinformation in academic circles in the developing world, putting into consideration that most academic staff or researchers assume that whatever is on the web is genuine and absolute true information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ranking of universities regarding their web-based activities plays a pivotal role in promoting scientific advancement since it motivates the open access accessibility to scientific results. In this study, a new ranking system based on the website quality factors and traffic evaluation was proposed. Since top-ranked universities are usually considered as the standard models for lower ranked ones, the focus of this study was on top-ranked universities. The proposed ranking was compared with well-known Webometrics ranking system. The website traffic and quality assessment were acquired for websites of top-ranked world universities and the correlation between these indices and the Webometrics ranking was evaluated. The summation of the weighted value of obtained measures according to an optimal weight vector obtained by a genetic algorithm framework was used for ranking purposes. The results showed that the website total traffic size was correlated with Webometrics rank (R ≈ - 0.6, p < 0.01). Also, using the weighted value of website quality and traffic measures, the proposed ranking system could predict Webometrics ranking by the accuracy of up to 69%. Even though the method was proposed for universities, it could be applied for ranking other types of centers or companies, provided that the suitable cost function for the genetics algorithm framework was defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Educational Sciences is the property of College of Education, King Saud University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Education / Al Mejlh Altrbwyh is the property of Kuwait University, Academic Publication Council and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to analyze the status of the Arab universities in the most important international universities rankings which are based on scientific output (shanghai, webometrics, QS). It also tries to understand why Arab universities are lagging behind in these rankings. After that, the author proposes a model for improving Arab universities performance in comparison to other universities in the above mentioned rankings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently there is increasing interest in university rankings. Annual rankings of world universities are published by QS for the Times Higher Education Supplement, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Higher Education and Accreditation Council of Taiwan and rankings based on Web visibility by the Cybermetrics Lab at CSIC. In this paper we compare the rankings using a set of similarity measures. For the rankings that are being published for a number of years we also examine longitudinal patterns. The rankings limited to European universities are compared to the ranking of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University. The findings show that there are reasonable similarities between the rankings, even though each applies a different methodology. The biggest differences are between the rankings provided by the QS-Times Higher Education Supplement and the Ranking Web of the CSIC Cybermetrics Lab. The highest similarities were observed between the Taiwanese and the Leiden rankings from European universities. Overall the similarities are increased when the comparison is limited to the European universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]