Ranking of Higher Education Institutions
There are several agencies that rank institutions of higher education according to various indicators. Each such ranking has its own methodology and formulas. In most rankings there is a component related to publications, and usually the publication data come from a central database. Publications in journals that are ranked highly in these databases receive higher scores in international rankings.
Academic Ranking of World Universities: Shanghai Ranking
The ranking is based on a weighted calculation of six different indicators:
- The number of Nobel Prize and Fields Medal winners among faculty and alumni
- The number of researchers included in Clarivate Analytics' Highly Cited Researchers list
- The number of articles published in Science and Nature,
- The number of articles included in Web of Science
- Achievements per researcher adjusted to the size of the university.
More information about the ranking methodology.
Ranking of institutions by fields.
More information about field-specific ranking methodology.
World University Rankings: Times Higher Education
Institutions are ranked according to thirteen indicators in five areas:
- Teaching
- Research—including publications
- Citations
- Income from industry
- International outlook.
Publication data comes from Scopus.
More information about the methodology.
More information about the ranking by fields.
QS World University Rankings
The ranking is based on six indicators:
- Academic reputation (based on an international survey)
- Employer reputation (based on an international survey)
- Citations
- Student-to-faculty ratio
- Percentage of international students
- Percentage of international faculty.
Publication data come from Scopus.
More information about the methodology.
CWTS Leiden Ranking
A comprehensive global ranking evaluating more than 2,800 universities worldwide based on scientific performance, using bibliometric indicators.
The ranking is based on open data from the OpenAlex database and not on self-reported information from the institutions, which ensures objectivity and reliability.
The user can choose from several indicators, including scientific impact, research collaboration, and open-access publishing.
The Leiden Ranking provides both size-dependent indicators (absolute values) and size-independent indicators (relative percentages), enabling fair comparison among institutions of different sizes.
The 2025 edition presents two significant innovations: the inclusion of non-core publications and a substantial expansion of the universities covered worldwide.
The ranking compiles data on university activity: research impact, international collaborations, open-access publishing, and publications by gender. Publication data come from Web of Science.
More information about the overall ranking methodology.
Information about ranking by fields.
CSRankings: Computer Science Rankings
CSStipendRankings is a ranking site focused on computer science PhD stipends in the United States. The site was created to provide transparency about PhD stipends.
CSRankings presents information about stipends (the amount students receive before tax), fees (everything the university charges, including health insurance), cost of living (based on MIT’s cost-of-living calculator), and the amount remaining for the student after expenses.
W&L Law Journal Rankings
A central tool for evaluating and ranking legal journals worldwide. The index is maintained by the Washington and Lee University School of Law.
The website publishes an annual ranking of legal journals based on citation data, and in the latest edition (2024) it presents the rankings of the 400 leading legal journals in the United States and 100 additional journals outside the U.S., based on citations and other indicators collected over the past five years.
The tool enables filtering and searching by topic, metrics such as impact factor, and number of citations, and it also provides historical data, allowing cross-journal comparisons over time.
The W&L Law Journal Rankings index is based on a combination of prominent citation data, with an emphasis on balancing the total number of journal citations (Journal and Case Cites) and the impact factor (the average number of citations per article).
The final Combined Score assigns roughly one-third weight to the impact factor and two-thirds to total citations, normalized to a 100-point scale to enable comparison among journals. This weighting was chosen after equilibrium testing among leading journals like Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal, in an effort to create a ranking system that balances technical influence (how many cited each article) with overall impact in the legal field.
In addition, the index considers the past five years, and for new journals an adjustment is made to account for the journal’s age, so as not to disadvantage recently established journals.