15 August 2018
The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), usually known as the Shanghai Rankings, is the oldest global ranking. The methodology is straightforward, and the indicators are all derived from databases accessible to the public.
There are six indicators:
- Alumni who have won Nobel Prizes for Chemistry, Physics, Physiology and Medicine, and Economics and Fields Medals for Mathematics (10% weighting)
- Faculty who have won these awards (20% weighting)
- Researchers included in the list of Highly Cited Researchers published by Clarivate Analytics (20% weighting)
- Articles in journals in the Science Citation Index - Expanded and the Social Science Citation Index (20% weighting)
- Publications in Nature and Science (20% weighting)
- Productivity; the weighted scores of these five indicators divided by the number of full-times senior faculty as determined by official national statistics (10% weighting).
These rankings are usually very stable from year to year with very modest and gradual changes at the top. This year’s top ten is the same as last year’s. There are, however, some modest changes further down. The leading Chinese universities continue to make significant progress. Tsinghua University has risen from 48th to 45th place and Peking University from 71st to 57th.
The United States continues to dominate these rankings, holding 16 of the top 20 places and 139 of the top 500. China (including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) has 62 universities in the top 500, the UK 39, Germany 36 and Australia 23. The US has increased its representation in the top 500 compared to 2017 when it was represented by 135 universities.
Harvard continues to hold the top spot for all indicators except for productivity, where the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is first.
