In Europe, there is a new initiative:

With the growing importance of university rankings and their impact on branding and therefore on student choice of study destination, the European Commission is supporting the development of a transparency tool as an alternative and complement to the traditional rankings that mainly focus on research. The new user-driven, multi-dimensional and international ranking for HEIs ‘U-Multirank’ will publish its first results in early 2014. From 2016/17 an independent organisation will run the ranking. The new ranking approach will communicate the diversity of European HEIs' profiles, teaching and research strengths and specialisations, and will be open to the participation of non-European HEIs on equal terms.

'U-Multirank' will allow HEIs to position themselves on several indicators such as their international profile, and to identify complementary and like-minded cooperation partners; it will enable policy makers, HEIs and students to rank individual institutions or programmes according to what is most important to them. By increasing transparency of the profiles of European HEIs, it will facilitate the ‘matching’ of needs for potential international learners or researchers, and thereby help boost the attractiveness of a broader number of European HEIs.

(See: Communication of the European Commission (2013) 499 final: European higher education in the world)

I believe this varies by country. In Brazil, we have the ranking Qualis CAPES to guide the quality of our publications: http://qualis.capes.gov.br/webqualis/principal.seam. This system lists criteria by area.

Other rankings that can be found are the Times Higher Education (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/) and the QS World University (http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings) .

In Europe, there is a new initiative:

With the growing importance of university rankings and their impact on branding and therefore on student choice of study destination, the European Commission is supporting the development of a transparency tool as an alternative and complement to the traditional rankings that mainly focus on research. The new user-driven, multi-dimensional and international ranking for HEIs ‘U-Multirank’ will publish its first results in early 2014. From 2016/17 an independent organisation will run the ranking. The new ranking approach will communicate the diversity of European HEIs' profiles, teaching and research strengths and specialisations, and will be open to the participation of non-European HEIs on equal terms.

'U-Multirank' will allow HEIs to position themselves on several indicators such as their international profile, and to identify complementary and like-minded cooperation partners; it will enable policy makers, HEIs and students to rank individual institutions or programmes according to what is most important to them. By increasing transparency of the profiles of European HEIs, it will facilitate the ‘matching’ of needs for potential international learners or researchers, and thereby help boost the attractiveness of a broader number of European HEIs.

(See: Communication of the European Commission (2013) 499 final: European higher education in the world)

Thanks. The link for the above communication is http://ec.europa.eu/education/higher-education/doc/com499_en.pdf

EU-funded U-Multirank might be an ineresting initiative.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/u-multirank-launched-by-eu-commissioner/2013272.article

Please refer to,

Ellen Hazelkorn (2009). Impact of Global Rankings on Higher Education Research and the Production of Knowledge., UNESCO