Uppsala University Ranks in Top 90 of New Global University Rankings

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has ranked the world’s 1,000 leading research universities every year since 2003. This year, more than 2,500 institutions were reviewed.

The ranking focuses on research excellence, measured primarily by publications and citations in scientific journals. Nobel Prizes and other prestigious awards are also taken into account in a university’s ranking.

“Compared with last year’s list, Uppsala University has achieved a slightly higher total score despite dropping 6 places from 82nd place,” says Emma Östlund, Controller at the Planning Division, Uppsala University.

Lost points

One reason for the lower ranking is that Uppsala University has lost points in the ‘Highly Cited’ category. This is based on how many of a university’s researchers are among the 1 per cent most cited in their respective fields.

“This is also the indicator that varies most from year to year. On the other hand, it is encouraging that the University has gone up in the indicator ‘Nature and Science’, which is based on the number of publications in the journals Nature and Science. The University has also received a higher score in the indicator ‘Publications’, based on the total number of publications in the Web of Science database,” Östlund comments.

Harvard number one

Other Swedish institutions are placed outside the top 100, which means that they do not receive an individual ranking or an overall score but are placed within a range. The universities of Lund, Stockholm and Gothenburg all rank in the 101-150 range.

As last year, US universities Harvard, Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) take the top three places.

The University of Cambridge in the UK is the highest ranked European institution, in fourth place. The top Scandinavian university is the University of Copenhagen in 32nd place.