The Interfax Russian National Rating published the results of evaluations of Russian universities’ activities in socialization and internationalization. Based on independent research, university ratings were created. The results of this research can be seen нon the Interfax Ratings site. SUSU significantly improved its position in two categories: "Internationalization" и "Socialization". In the first category, SUSU rose from the 107th position to the 31st-32nd, and in the second – from 134th to 27th.
The methods for evaluating university activities in the areas of consideration underwent some small changes (more information here).
Some of the key goals of Interfax’s special project are to search for new methods of independent evaluation of Russian universities and educational programs, stimulate competition between universities within the national educational system, and improve universities’ competitiveness in the international educational and research spaces.
The sources of data about university activities included the results of questionnaires from universities; materials from university sites; data located on special sites by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science; data located on sites of organizations and funds tied to the development of science and higher education in Russia; Interfax’s databases SPARK and SKAN; and the Web of Science and Scopus databases.
The special project from the Interfax Group was launched in 2009 with the goal of developing and testing new methods to independently evaluate Russian universities. In the beginning Rosobrnadzdorom supported the project, but from 2010 it is carried out as Interfax’s independent project with the participation of the “Echo of Moscow” radio station.