Methodology
With more data from more institutions, 2018 rankings give a bigger picture than ever before. Here they explain the methodology that underpins the tables.
The performance indicators are grouped into five areas:
· Teaching (the learning environment)
· Research (volume, income and reputation)
· Citations (research influence);
· International outlook (staff, students and research)
· Industry income (knowledge transfer)
Teaching (the learning environment): 30%
· Reputation survey: 15%
· Staff-to-student ratio: 4.5%
· Doctorate-to-bachelor’s ratio: 2.25%
· Doctorates-awarded- to-academic-staff ratio: 6%
· Institutional income: 2.25%
Research (volume, income and reputation): 30%
· Reputation survey: 18%
· Research income: 6%
· Research productivity: 6%
The most prominent indicator in this category looks at a university’s reputation for research excellence among its peers, based on the responses to our annual Academic Reputation Survey. Research income is scaled against academic staff numbers and adjusted for purchasing-power parity (PPP).
Citations (research influence): 30%
Research influence indicator looks at universities’ role in spreading new knowledge and ideas. They examine research influence by capturing the number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars globally.
The citations help to show how much each university is contributing to the sum of human knowledge: they tell whose research has stood out, has been picked up and built on by other scholars and, most importantly, has been shared around the global scholarly community to expand the boundaries of understanding, irrespective of discipline.
International outlook (staff, students, research): 7.5%
· International-to-domestic-student ratio: 2.5%
· International-to-domestic-staff ratio: 2.5%
· International collaboration: 2.5%
The ability of a university to attract undergraduates, postgraduates and faculty from all over the planet is a key to its success on the world stage.
Industry income (knowledge transfer): 2.5%
A university’s ability to help industry with innovations, inventions and consultancy has become a core mission of the contemporary global academy. This category seeks to capture such knowledge-transfer activity by looking at how much research income an institution earns from industry (adjusted for PPP), scaled against the number of academic staff it employs.
The category suggests the extent to which businesses are willing to pay for research and a university’s ability to attract funding in the commercial marketplace – useful indicators of institutional quality.
The calculation of the World University Rankings has been subject to independent audit by professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).