U.S. News Best Global Universities Rankings Methodology
As more and more students study abroad, focusing on specific aspects of universities has become an important part of students’ research. Best global universities rankings by US News were published to give insight so students can compare universities globally on different parameters. Earlier we discussed the US News Business Ranking Methodology. In this article, we will discuss US News' best global universities ranking methodology, so, you can understand the rankings better and compare schools on different parameters. The Best Global Universities rankings have ranked almost 1500 top educational institutions covering 86 countries. US News calculates the rankings based on 13 indicators and gives different weightage to each indicator.
US News Rankings - Indicators
The 13 indicators are differentiated into 3 categories:
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| Category |
Indicators |
|---|---|
| Reputation indicators |
|
| Bibliometric Indicators |
|
| Scientific Excellence Indicators |
|
What each indicator of US News Rankings signifies?
We have explained each indicator separately, so, you can have a better understanding of all the parameters used to derive the best global rankings.
- Research Reputation: This indicator reflects the academic reputation of higher education institutions globally as well as regionally. It determines the best universities for conducting research.
- Publications: This indicator determines the quality of the research conducted in an institute. Here, US News analyses the number of papers published in renowned journals. Certain disciplines influence this indicator more than others like universities offering medicine (studies) publish more papers than others.
- Books: Books are important for those involved in research work. This indicator is more useful for universities offering study in humanities and social sciences.
- Conferences: Academic conferences are important for communication in Computer Science and Engineering disciplines.
- Normalized citation impact: This indicator reflects the impact of the research work conducted by the university. The citation impact is considered a fundamental aspect of measuring research performance.
- Total citations: This indicator analyses how impactful is the research of the university globally. It is determined by analyzing the citation's impact on the publication's ranking.
- Number of publications cited: This indicator considers the number of papers published in the top 10% of the highly cited papers in different fields. The number of highly cited papers depends on the size of the university, so, this indicator perfectly reflects the quality of the research work produced by the university.
- Percentage of total publications cited: This indicator considers the percentage of papers out of the university's total published papers in the top 10% of the highly cited papers globally. It analyses how much quality research has been produced by the university.
- International collaboration (country): As only, the best universities attract international authors/collaborators, this indicator takes into account the proportion of the university's total papers published by international co-authors in comparison to papers published by co-authors of the country where the university is located.
- International collaboration: This indicator measures the proportion of the university's total papers having international co-authors.
- Number of highly cited papers among the top: This indicator highlights the number of papers cited among the top one percent of the papers. This indicates the performance of the university's research work.
- Percentage of total publications cited among the top: This indicator shows the percentage of highly cited papers with respect to the total number of papers it produced. It shows the impact of the research work conducted by the university.
US News Indicator Weightage
Different weightage is given to each indicator:
| Rankings Indicators |
Weightage |
|---|---|
| Global research reputation |
12.5% |
| Regional research reputation |
12.5% |
| Publications |
10% |
| Books |
2.5% |
| Conferences |
2.5% |
| Normalized citation impact |
10% |
| Total citations |
7.5% |
| Number of publications cited among the top |
12.5% |
| Percentage of total publications cited among the top |
10% |
| International collaboration (country) |
5% |
| International collaboration |
5% |
| Number of highly cited papers among the top |
5% |
| Percentage of total publications cited among the top |
5% |
| Total |
100% |
Apart from the best global university ranking, US News also publishes Business rankings and best national university rankings.
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Aishwarya is a professional Writer currently working as a Study Abroad Expert in the Editorial Team at Shiksha. She has over 5 years of experience and is skilled at creating Online Content with leveraged knowledge i... Read Full Bio
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