This news item in Nature lists some of the (very valid) objections to the many unvalidated university rankings -- both subjective and objective -- that are in wide use today.
These problems are all the more reason for extending Open Access (OA) and developing OA scientometrics, which will provide open, validatable and calibratable metrics for research, researchers, and institutions in each field -- a far richer, more sensitive, and more equitable spectrum of metrics than the few, weak and unvalidated measures available today.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
