The Global Ranking Regime and the Redefined Mission of Higher Education in the Post-Covid Era -- An Introduction -- Conceptualization and Theory Building -- Rank Scholarship Today -- Local Knowledge When Ranking Journals -- The Ranking Regime and the Production of Knowledge -- Academic Publishing in South African Universities -- Vernacular Scholarship -- The SSCI Syndrome -- Cases, Contexts and Reflections -- Comparative Case Studies on Research Assessment Exercises in China, Hong Kong, and Japan -- Measuring by Numbers -- The Case of Taiwan -- The Paradox of Autonomy -- The Shifting Sands of Academic Output -- Audit Culture and Academic Production -- Global Research Productivity Rivalry -- Actors and Roles -- In League: The Brave New World of Higher Education -- Conclusion. .

This book examines the quality assessment movement in academic scholarship, as globalization prompts a search for global measures of university services and output. It gauges productivity in terms of universal publication metrics, and considers ranking and research productivity from a comparative perspective. The book considers the use of the “impact factor” as a gauge of publication value, noting that this less important in countries lacking central government appropriations to universities and to research. It argues that pressure to publish in certain journals, and to research topics of interest to English language readers, has been felt differentially in English-language systems, compared to others, but also that performance pressures fall more on younger, more juniour, contract staff, than on senior and tenured professors. It problematizes international comparisons of quality, and analyses the benefits of a zone of ideas and metrics in a common language – promoting international mobility, efficiency, collaboration - but also the costs which are rarely borne equally across countries, languages and cultures. The book provides a strong, evidence-based contribution to major debates in contemporary higher education reforms and the measurement of academic output.