The ShanghaiRanking's Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) uses six indicators including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate Analytics, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance of a university.

Alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (Alumni) (10%)

Number of the alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals. Alumni are defined as those who obtain bachelor's, master's or doctoral degrees from the institution. Different weights are set according to the periods of obtaining degrees. The weight is 100% for alumni obtaining degrees after 2011, 90% for alumni obtaining degrees in 2001-2010, 80% for alumni obtaining degrees in 1991-2000, and so on, and finally 10% for alumni obtaining degrees in 1921-1930. If a person obtains more than one degree from an institution, the institution is considered once only.

Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (Award) (20%)

Number of the staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Economics and Fields Medal in Mathematics. Staff is defined as those who work at an institution at the time of winning the prize. Different weights are set according to the periods of winning the prizes. The weight is 100% for winners after 2021, 90% for winners in 2011-2020, 80% for winners in 2001-2010, 70% for winners in 1991-2000, and so on, and finally 10% for winners in 1931-1940. If a winner is affiliated with more than one institution, each institution is assigned the reciprocal of the number of institutions. For Nobel prizes, if a prize is shared by more than one person, weights are set for winners according to their proportion of the prize.

Highly Cited Researchers (HiCi) (20%)

Number of Highly Cited Researchers selected by the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate. The Highly Cited Researchers list issued in January 2024 was used for the calculation of HiCi indicator in ARWU 2024. If a Highly Cited Researcher receives recognition in more than one ESI fields, each field is counted separately. Only the primary affiliations of Highly Cited Researchers are considered.

Papers published in Nature and Science (N&S) (20%)

Number of research articles published in Nature and Science between 2019 and 2023. To distinguish the order of author affiliation, a weight of 100% is assigned for corresponding author affiliation, 50% for first author affiliation (second author affiliation if the first author affiliation is the same as corresponding author affiliation), 25% for the next author affiliation, and 10% for other author affiliations. Only publications of 'Article' type are considered.

Papers indexed in Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation Index (PUB) (20%)

Number of papers indexed in Science Citation Index-Expanded™ and Social Science Citation Index™ (Web of Science) in 2023. Only publications of 'Article' type are considered. When calculating the total number of papers of an institution, a special weight of two was introduced for papers indexed in Social Science Citation Index™.

Per capita academic performance of an institution (PCP) (10%)

Weighted scores of the above five indicators divided by the number of full-time equivalent academic staff. If the number of academic staff for institutions of a country cannot be obtained, the average number of academic staff for world top 1000 universities is used for all institutions in this country.