On August 15th, the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy is releasing its latest annual Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). The ARWU listing, powered in part by figures from Clarivate Analytics, has appeared since 2003. The listing features worldwide universities ranked according to six objective criteria that evaluate various facets of university performance. The scoring rewards distinction in such areas as publishing multiple high-impact papers, publishing in prestigious journals, and winning major awards.
In previous years, after evaluating more than 1,300 universities overall, the listing has customarily presented the 500 top-performing institutions. This year, however, the presentation has been expanded to the top 800.
Originally conceived as an evaluation of the global standing of top Chinese universities, undertaken by the Center for World-Class Universities, Graduate School of Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, ARWU has attracted increasing attention around the world. Since 2009, the ranking has been published and copyrighted by the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, an independent organization devoted to intelligence on higher education.
The indicators by which ARWU evaluates world universities include the number of alumni and staff who have won Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of articles published by faculty in the high-impact journals Nature and Science, and the per capita performance of the university.
Data from Clarivate Analytics figure in two of the indicators: The number of Highly Cited Researchers as designated by Clarivate (that is, authors who have produced multiple papers that rank among the top 1% most cited for their field and date of publication); and the university’s number of articles indexed in the Science Citation Index – Expanded and the Social Sciences Citation Index – both of which are components of Clarivate Analytics Web of Science.
In the latest ARWU, Harvard and Stanford maintain their respective #1 and #2 positions from last year, while the top 10 sees a bit of shuffling. For example, the University of Cambridge rises to supplant the University of California, Berkeley, at #3. Meanwhile, notably, Washington University in St. Louis makes its first appearance among the top 20.
To view the entire 2017 ARWU listing, please click here http://www.ShanghaiRanking.com/.
