The Times Higher Education Young Universities Ranking apply the same methodology and uses the same 13 performance indicators (grouped into five areas) as the flagship THE World University Rankings but the methodology has been recalibrated to give less weight to reputation.

TEACHING (the learning environment) 30%

Reputation survey (10%) - The most recent Academic Reputation Survey (run annually) that underpins this category was carried out between November 2018 and March 2019 It examined the perceived prestige of institutions in teaching. A balanced spread of responses across disciplines and countries has been ensured. The 2019 data are combined with the results of the 2018 survey, giving more than 21,000 responses.

Staff-to-student ratio (6%)

Doctorate-to-bachelor’s ratio (3%)

Doctorates-awarded-to-academic-staff ratio (8%)

Institutional income (3%) - Institutional income is scaled against academic staff numbers and normalised for purchasing-power parity (PPP). It indicates an institution’s general status and gives a broad sense of the infrastructure and facilities available to students and staff.

RESEARCH (volume, income and reputation) 30%

Reputation survey (12%) - Indicator is based on the responses to annual Academic Reputation Survey.

Research income (9%) - Research income is scaled against academic staff numbers and adjusted for purchasing-power parity (PPP). This indicator is fully normalised to take account of each university’s distinct subject profile, reflecting the fact that research grants in science subjects are often bigger than those awarded for the highest-quality social science, arts and humanities research.

Research productivity (9%) - To measure productivity THE counts the number of papers published in the academic journals indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus database per scholar, scaled for institutional size and normalised for subject.

CITATIONS (research influence) 30%

THE examine research influence by capturing the average number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars globally. In 2020 edition  THE bibliometric data supplier Elsevier examined 77.4  million citations to 12.8 million journal articles, articles reviews, conference proceedings, books and book chapters published over five years. The data include more than 23,400  academic journals indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus database and all indexed publications between 2014 and 2018. Citations to these publications made in the six years from 2014 to 2019 are also collected.

INTERNATIONAL OUTLOOK (staff, students, research) 7.5%

International-to-domestic-student ratio (2.5%)

International-to-domestic-staff ratio (2.5%)

International collaboration (2.5%) - The proportion of a university’s total research journal publications that have at least one international co-author and reward higher volumes is calculated. This indicator is normalised to account for a university’s subject mix and uses the same five-year window as the “Citations - research influence” category.

INDUSTRY INCOME (knowledge transfer) 2.5%

This category seeks to capture knowledge-transfer activity by looking at how much research income an institution earns from industry (adjusted for PPP), scaled against the number of academic staff it employs.