New Leiden Ranking of universities

[Paul Wouters]

China increases scientific impact

The US is still the dominant player in the scientific world. Just like
previous years, MIT is the university which has the highest citation impact
of its publications in the world. The top 100 list consists of universities
from thirteen countries. However, new centres of science are emerging in
the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2013. These newcomers are for example located in
China (37, six newcomers), Iran (five newcomers) and Brazil (10, two
newcomers).

Universities outside the US and Europe are becoming serious players in the
field, not only in number of publications but also in scientific impact.
For the first time two Chinese universities Nankai (rank 53) and Hunan
(rank 55) overtake the best – in terms of impact – universities in the
Netherlands (Leiden, rank 58). These are some findings of the new CWTS
Leiden Ranking 2013 which has been published on the website
http://www.leidenranking.com.

The CWTS Leiden Ranking 2013 measures the scientific performance of 500
major universities worldwide. Using a sophisticated set of bibliometric
indicators, the ranking aims to provide highly accurate measurements of the
scientific impact of universities and of universities’ involvement in
scientific collaboration.


University – industry collaboration

For the first time, the Leiden Ranking 2013 also provides information on
collaboration between universities and industry. This indicator measures
which share of the publications of a university are produced in
collaboration with companies. Eindhoven Technical University (Netherlands)
is the university which publishes most intensely in collaboration with
companies. No less than 15.6% of its publications contain a business
address. Delft University and Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden)
share the second place with 14%. To compare: Harvard University (US), the
world’s largest research university, clocks a score of 7.6%. More
information on the collaboration between universities and industry is
available in the University-Industry Research Connections 2013 scoreboard,
which has been published together with the new Leiden Ranking,
http://www.socialsciences.leidenuniv.nl/cwts/research/uirc-scoreboard-2013.html



Improvements and new features of Leiden Ranking 2013

The CWTS Leiden Ranking 2013 includes a number of other improvements and
new features. In particular, the data collection methodology of the ranking
has been extensively revised. The current database also allows users to
make field specific rankings by selecting one of five broad fields:
biomedical and health sciences; life and earth sciences; mathematics and
computer sciences; natural sciences and engineering; or social science &
humanities. In addition, the ranking gives the possibility to exclude
publications in special types of journals, such as, non-international
journals, trade journals, and popular magazines. These journals play a
different role from scientific journals.



Differences with other University Rankings

Compared with other university rankings, the CTWS Leiden Ranking offers
more advanced indicators of scientific impact and collaboration and uses a
more transparent methodology. The ranking does not rely on highly
subjective data obtained from reputational surveys or on data provided by
universities themselves. Also, the CWTS Leiden Ranking refrains from
aggregating different dimensions of university performance into a single
overall indicator.


More information about the ranking results and the methodology of the CWTS
Leiden Ranking 2013: http://www.leidenranking.com.


More information can also be obtained from the following CWTS staff members
:

-Paul Wouters, Director CWTS; p.f.wouters at cwts.leidenuniv.nl

-Robert Tijssen, University Industry Research Connections;
tijssen at cwts.leidenuniv.nl

-Inge van der Weijden, Press contacts;
i.c.m.van.der.weijden at cwts.leidenuniv.nl

With regards,

Paul Wouters
Professor of Scientometrics
Director Centre for Science and Technology Studies
Leiden University

Visiting address:
Willem Einthoven Building
Wassenaarseweg 62A
2333 AL Leiden
Mail address: P.O. Box 905
2300 AX Leiden
T: +31 71 5273909 (secr.)
F: +31 71 5273911
E: p.f.wouters at cwts.leidenuniv.nl

CWTS home page: www.cwts.nl
Blog about Citation Cultures: http://citationculture.wordpress.com/
Research Dreams: www.researchdreams.nl
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