The Shanghai Rankings 3

Two of the indicators in the Shanghai rankings measure research achievement at the highest level. The highly cited researchers indicator is based on a list of those scientists who have been cited most frequently by other researchers. Since ARWU counts current but not past affiliations of researchers, it is possible for a university to boost its score by recruiting researchers. This indicator might then  be seen as signalling a willingness to invest in and to retain international talent and hence a sign of future excellence. 

The top five for this indicator are

1,  Harvard
2.  Stanford
3.  UC Berkeley
4.  MIT
5.  Princeton

This indicator shows that there are a lot of US state universities and non-Ivy League schools that are doing well on this indicator. There is the University of Michigan (6th), University of Washington (13th), University of Minnesota (19th), Penn State (23rd), and Rutgers  (42nd).

Before this year, the methodology for this indicator was simple. If a highly cited researcher had two affiliations then there was a straightforward fifty-fifty division. Things were complicated when King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in Jeddah signed up scores of researchers on part time contracts, a story recounted in Science. ARWU has responded deftly by asking researchers to indicate how their time was divided if they had joint affiliations and this seems to have deflated KAU's score considerably but has had no or minimal effect for anyone else.

The top five universities for papers in Nature and Science are:

1.  Harvard
2.  Stanford
3.  MIT
4.  UC Berkeley
5.  Cambridge

High fliers on this indicator include several specialised science and medical institutions such as Imperial College London, Rockefeller University, Karolinka Institutet and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.