World University rankings have become well-established tools that students, university managers and policy makers read and use. Each ranking claims to have a unique methodology capable of measuring the 'quality' of universities. The purpose of this paper is to analyze to which extent these different rankings measure the same phenomenon and what it is that they are measuring. For this, we selected a total of seven world-university rankings and performed a principal component analysis. After ensuring that despite their methodological differences, they all come together to a single component, we hypothesized that bibliometric indicators could explain what is being measured. Our analyses show that ranking scores from whichever of the seven league tables under study can be explained by the number of publications and citations received by the institution. We conclude by discussing policy implications and opportunities on how a nuanced and responsible use of rankings can help decision making at the institutional level

中文翻译：

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矿业大学排名：以出版物产出和引文影响为基础

世界大学排名已成为学生，大学管理人员和决策者阅读和使用的公认工具。每个排名都声称拥有一种能够衡量大学“质量”的独特方法。本文的目的是分析这些不同的等级在多大程度上衡量了同一现象以及它们在衡量什么。为此，我们总共选择了七个世界大学排名，并进行了主成分分析。确保尽管它们在方法上存在差异，但它们全部融合为一个组成部分，我们假设文献计量指标可以解释所测量的内容。我们的分析表明，所研究的七个联赛表中任何一个的排名得分都可以由该机构收到的出版物和引用次数来解释。我们通过讨论政策含义和机会来进行总结，以细化和负责任地使用排名如何帮助机构一级的决策