Methodology for ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2019
- Ranking Subjects
- Candidate Universities
- Indicators and Weights
- Definition of Indicators
- Data Sources
Ranking Subjects
In 2019 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, institutions are ranked in 54 subjects across Natural Sciences, Engineering, Life Sciences, Medical Sciences, and Social Sciences.
Candidate Universities
To be included in a subject ranking, the universities need to have a minimum number of research publications during the period of 2013-2017. The publication threshold is different for different subjects. Bibliometric data are collected from Web of Science and InCites. Web of Science categories are mapped to 54 academic subjects. Details can be found here.
Indicators and Weights
Different weights are allocated to the indicators for different subjects, as listed below. For each indicator, institutions are calculated as a percentage of the top scored institution, then the square root of the percentage is multiplied by the allocated weight. A final score is arrived by adding scores for all indicators and the final score is ranked in descending order.
In calculating the score of CNCI, the maximum value of CNCI in a subject is set as the lower value of: (1) the twice of the average CNCI for all institutions in this subject; (2) the maximum of the CNCI for all institutions in this subject. Institutions’ scores on CNCI are calculated as the proportion of their CNCI to the
maximum value. If an institution’s CNCI is higher than the maximum value, its score on CNCI will be assigned as 100.
Definition of Indicators
| Indicators | Definition |
|---|---|
| PUB |
PUB is the number of papers authored by an institution in an Academic Subject during the period of 2013-2017. Only papers of 'Article' type are considered. Data are collected from Web of Science and InCites. Papers in different Web of Science categories are grouped into relevant Academic Subjects (Classification of Web of Science Categories into Academic Subjects).
|
| CNCI | Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) is the ratio of citation of papers published by an institution in an Academic Subject during the period of 2013-2017 to the average citations of papers in the same category, of the same year and same type. A CNCI value of 1 represents world-average performance while a value above 1 represents performance above the world average. Only papers of 'Article' type are considered. Data are collected from InCites database. |
| IC | International collaboration (IC) is the number of publications that have been found with at least two different countries in addresses of the authors divided by the total number of publications in an Academic Subject for an institution during the period of 2013-2017. Only papers of ‘Article’ type are considered. Data are collected from InCites database. |
| TOP | TOP is the number of papers published in Top Journals in an Academic Subject for an institution during the period of 2013-2017. Top Journals are identified through ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Excellence Survey or by Journal Impact Factor. In 2019, 134 top journals selected by the Survey are used in rankings of 45 Academic Subjects. In Computer Science & Engineering, 17 selected top conferences are also taken into account this year. The list of the top journals and conferences can be found here. For Academic Subjects that do not have journals identified by the Survey, the JCR top 20% journals are used. Top 20% journals are defined as their Journal Impact Factors in the top
20% of each Web of Science category according to Journal Citation Report (JCR) 2017, and then aggregated into different Academic Subjects. Only papers of 'Article' type are considered for this indicator. But in the subject of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, both "Article" and "Review" are counted because only one journal in this subject was selected as Top journal and it mainly publishes reviews. |
| AWARD |
AWARD refers to the total number of the staff of an institution wining a significant award in an Academic Subject since 1981. Staff is defined as those who work full-time at an institution at the time of winning the prize. If a researcher retired at the time of winning the award, we count the institution where the researcher’s last full-time academic position was at. The significant awards in each subject are identified through ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Excellence Survey. The list of the significant awards in each subject can be viewed here. If a winner is affiliated with more than one institution at the time of winning the award, each institution is assigned the reciprocal of the number of institutions. If the award is awarded to more than one winner in one year, weights are set for winners according to their proportion of the prize. Different weights are set according to the periods of winning the prizes. The weight is 100% for winners in 2011-2017, 75% for winners in 2001-2010, 50% for winners in 1991-2000, and 25% for winners in 1981-1990. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is selected for Biological Sciences, Human Biological Sciences, Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences. Winners of this award are assigned to one or more subjects according to the topics of their recognized contributions. If a contribution belongs to more than one subject, the winner will be counted once for each relevant subject. |