The world’s number one research university is from China in the new Leiden ranking (the one you can count on, literally) – as are another seven of the global top ten. Zheijang U knocks Harvard U into second place, with Uni Toronto in 8th.
Some 16 of the global top 20 universities are in China. All up 313 Chinese universities are listed, compared to 206 from the United States.
The Australian top ten for 2024 is in line with previous Leiden editions, and other rankings, with the Group of Eight leading – Uni Melbourne (33rd in the world), Uni Sydney (39), Monash U (51), Uni Queensland (54), and UNSW (56). But Leiden reports a big gap between the big five and the rest of the Go8, with UWA at 220, Uni Adelaide at 238 and ANU (280). Deakin U (296) and UTS (313) make up the top ten.
In comparison, the 2023 top ten were, Uni Melbourne (28), Uni Sydney (36), Uni Queensland (48), Monash U (49), UNSW (52), UWA (203), Uni Adelaide (220), ANU (259), Deakin U (297) and Curtin U (310), UTS was 315th.
University marketers do not go hard promoting Leiden results, what with their being hard to explain in a media announcement but their corporate affairs colleagues will likely warn anybody in government who will listen that this year’s results would have been way worse if it was not for research funded by international student fees.
The Leiden ranking is based on data (no opinion component) and as such is the best-published measure of research performance for hard sciences, using citation indices from “core journals” in the Web of Science database. Measures include the number/proportion of a university’s publications, generally papers with high citation scores per field.
