After QS and Times Higher Education had ended their collaboration, the methodology for these rankings continues to be used by its developer Quacquarelli Symonds.
The old iterations of the rankings produced collaboratively by THE and QS Quacquarelli Symonds received a number of criticisms.
Some critics expressed concern about the manner in which the peer review conducted by THE-QS was carried out.
We are vehemently opposed to the evaluation of the University according to the outcome of such PR competitions.Ian Diamond, former chief executive of the Economic and Social Research Council and now vice-chancellor of the University of Aberdeen and a member of the editorial board, wrote to Times Higher Education in 2007, saying:[3] The use of a citation database must have an impact because such databases do not have as wide a cover of the social sciences (or arts and humanities) as the natural sciences.
Hence the low position of the London School of Economics, caused primarily by its citations score, is a result not of the output of an outstanding institution but the database and the fact that the LSE does not have the counterweight of a large natural science base.