Times Higher Education is very keen to give universities in the BRICS and emerging economies visibility and allow their performance to be monitored. Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education rankings, told People's Daily Online.

Times Higher Education (THE), UK's authoritative magazine publishes the world's first ranking for universities in BRICS countries and emerging economies today (on Dec 5, 2013).

The following is the excerpt of People's Daily Online's written interview with Phil Baty after the ranking was released.

PD Online: Times Higher Education publish the very first ranking measuring universities in BRICS and other emerging countries. What is the THE's intention to publish the ranking?

Phil Baty: Many of the emerging economies - led by China - have prioritised the development of world class universities as a key part of their economic growth strategies. But due to the traditional dominance of the US and European universities in the overall world university rankings, some of the most exciting and dynamic universities have not been visible in rankings - it has been hard to monitor their progress and benchmark their performance against the very best in the world, like Oxford and Harvard. So Times Higher Education is responding to strong demand to provide more data on a wider range of institutions - to allow more institutions from the developing economies to benchmark their performance against the established, trusted and rigorous standards set by Times Higher Education's world rankings.

PD Online: The concept of BRICS has been known for many years. Why does THE choose this year to make the ranking?

Phil Baty: Times Higher Education has been planning this world first BRICS ranking for many, many months, but we wanted to wait until we had collected sufficiently rich and deep data on a wide range of institutions before publishing a ranking. We felt, after the publication of the Times Higher Education 2013-14 World University Rankings in October - the tenth annual ranking we have published - we were ready to go for the new BRICS rankings.

PD Online: What kind of message does THE want to convey to the covered countries?

Phil Baty: Many of the BRICS - China in particular - have some very strong universities that already compete with the very best in the world. There are many, many more hoping to follow, and we are very keen to give them visibility and allow their performance to be monitored.