Opportunities for the consolidation of rating products in the internet environment

The article reveals the experience of a project on consolidation of rating products within the single portal with related services for users. We describe the ideology of an open Internet platform, its structure and navigation, and specially designed analytical tools. We focus on the developed and tested trust index in relation to all the ratings on the website, which helps approach a possible solution to the problem of rating verification. We point out the fact that the proposed analytical verification tools are vulnerable to manipulation that is manifested in users’ hostile attacks on selective ratings by giving the ratings deliberately low trust scores. The paper shows the relevance of the portal designed, which is manifested not only in the number of views of its content, but also in the public reaction to various ratings of both individuals and organizations. In addition, we disclose the experience of using academic ratings over the period of several years to reveal undesirable trends and emerging threats in the market of economic research. We show an attempt to combine different ratings for the purpose of determining the extent of using educational and scientific potential of Russian regions. Video interviews allowed us to formulate ten principles in the development and use of ratings: neutrality (disinterest of the developer as a participant); pluralism (diversity of ratings); duration of the period of preparation; improvement of development methodology; openness of the object of rating and ranker; selectivity (optionality) of application, etc. These principles help raise the work of rankers to a higher level. We outline the ways of using the portal for communication between rankers and the expert community, for establishing a constructive dialogue between them and improving rating tools.