About the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)

The ARWU first appeared in 2003. Although there have been some changes in the criteria used to rank universities, the ranking methodology has been fairly consistent since 2005.

View the full ARWU rankings.

Performance Indicators

While the ARWU provides a list of the top 500 universities world wide, only the top 100 are provided with a ranked position. The remaining institutions are ranked in bands of either 50 or 100.

However, as the ARWU provides a score for each indicator for all 500 universities, we are able to determine the ranked position of all institutions to a high degree of accuracy.

Please refer to the ARWU website for information on the methodology.

Subject Rankings

About QS Ranking

The QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) Ranking was introduced in 2005 and was conducted in conjunction with the Times Higher Education magazine until 2009.

View the full QS rankings.

Performance Indicators

For this 20th edition, as planned, we have significantly evolved our methodology. These changes reflect the shifts in higher education that have occurred over the past two decades, such as the growing importance of sustainability, employability, and research collaborations. We have introduced three new indicators (see Table) and rebalanced the weights for other indicators.

Sustainability, employability, and international research collaboration are the dimensions that are either reinforced or introduced for the first time. We did not make these changes lightly and believe that they reflect the collective intelligence of the sector, and the changing priorities of students. This evolution of our rankings helps students identify institutions that excel in the areas that matter to them.

Subject Rankings

QS employ an different set of measures for their subject rankings, which list the top 200 universities in a given field. Each of the 54 subjects (across five broad areas) has different weightings applied to four factors:

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Subject ranking and their weight by subject

About the Times Higher Education Ranking (THE)

The THE Ranking was introduced in 2005. Until 2009, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) ran the rankings for the THE. The 2010 THE ranking had a new set of criteria and relied on information gathered from Thomson Reuters, as well as survey data and institutional statistics. The 2015 THE ranking moved from using Thomson Reuters to Scopus for the provision of data.

View the full THE rankings.

Performance Indicators

There has been some tweaking of the indictors since the introduction of the ranking in 2010 including an indictor for the level of international collaboration (judged using publication data in the WOS).

The THE ranking utilises Z scores for all data sets except for the results of the academic reputation survey.

Each data point is given a score based on its distance from the mean average of the entire data set, where the scale is the standard deviation of the data set.

There has been some tweaking of the indictors since the introduction of the ranking in 2010 including an indictor for the level of international collaboration (judged using publication data in the WOS).

The THE ranking utilises Z scores for all data sets except for the results of the academic reputation survey.

Each data point is given a score based on its distance from the mean average of the entire data set, where the scale is the standard deviation of the data set.

The Z-score is then turned into a "cumulative probability score" to arrive at the final totals.

For the results of the reputation survey, the data are highly skewed in favour of a small number of institutions at the top of the rankings. In the 2012-13 ranking, THE introduced an exponential component to increase differentiation between institutions lower down the scale.

In 2015, THE removed 649 papers with more than 1,000 authors from the citations indicator, which prevents individual very highly cited papers from skewing the citation score criteria of small institutions.

Also in 2015, THE blended equal measures of a country-adjusted and non-country-adjusted raw measure of citations scores. THE argue that this presents a 'more rigorous approach to international comparison of research publications'.

The move from Thomson Reuters to Scopus bibliometric assisted in UWA's significant rise in the 2015 ranking. At the time of the ranking Scopus covered significantly more Australian journals than Thomson Reuters, thereby increasing UWA's score for papers per faculty member and citation scores.

Subject Rankings

THE also conducts rankings by subject areas, with UWA ranked in the top 100 in two key fields.

About the US News & World Ranking

US News & World – the US newspaper famous for its annual ranking of American universities – launched a global ranking system in 2014. In 2018, the ranking has refined its methodology each year since its inception; therefore, this year's results are not directly comparable to previous years'. Compared to the QS and THE rankings, the US News and World methodology has a greater focus on research, but still includes a reputational survey component.

View the full USN&W rankings.

Performance Indicators

Subject Rankings

US N&W also conducts rankings by subject areas, with UWA ranked in the top 200 in sixteen key fields:

About the National Taiwan University Ranking (NTU)

The National Taiwan University Ranking (NTU) rankings first appeared in 2007. The ranking methodology has been relatively consistent since 2008 and is heavily reliant upon research output (Web of Science indexed articles).

View the full NTU rankings.

Performance Indicators

Within the NTU ranking there is no normalisation of citation data, which boosts the results of universities focused on medical and physical sciences, due to publication practices in those fields.

Staff size is not taken into account in the ranking (although the NTU team does provide a separate score for each university which has been adjusted for size).

Note:
(a)The time frame of the three long-term indicators is consistent with that in ESI, providing cumulative data for the last 11 years.
(b)The indexes used in the calculation of Ref. Ranking

Subject Rankings

The NTU Rankings have also expanded to include rankings by broad fields and specific subject areas for the top 300 universities in the world.