A US News and World report has placed the University of Southampton in the top 100 of Universities worldwide. The report looks at 1,500 universities worldwide and ranks them based on 13 indicators of success.
Southampton was ranked 97th overall, and the subject-by-subject breakdown revealed that its Public, Environmental and Occupational Health department ranked the highest in the university, placing 39th in the world. Endocrinology and Metabolism came joint 45th. Geosciences came 47th in the world, while Mechanical Engineering and Electrical and Electronic Engineering placed joint 52nd and 56th respectively. The Physics department was ranked 65th in the world, Surgery came 66th, and Social Sciences and Public Health was rated 74th. Southampton’s Infectious Diseases department is 82nd, and Immunology is 84th. Southampton’s rival, the University of Portsmouth, is ranked 604th overall.
The US News and World ranks ‘Global Universities’, which it defines as those part of the top 250 universities in the analytics company Clarivate’s attitudes survey, and those who have published 1,250 or more journal articles in a year, of which there are 1,748. These are then ranked by 13 indicators. These are:
- Global Research Reputation: this makes up 12.5% of the total ranking, and is based off a 5-year aggregate of the world-wide results of Clarivate’s survey.
- Regional Research Reputation: This is based off an aggregate of the previous 5 years of responses to Clarivate’s survey within the respective university’s geographic region, and forms another 12.5% of the ranking
- Bibliometric Indicators: the productivity and quality of university researchers and their work.
- Publications: contributing towards 10% of a university’s overall score, this rates the overall productivity of university researchers.
- Books: 2.5% of the overall score, this accounts for the number of books published by university researchers.
- Conferences: another 2.5% of the score, this measures the number of the conferences held by the university.
- Normalised Citation Impact: `10% of the total, this accounts for the total citations per paper, normalised for university size, research specialty, publication year and type.
- Total Citations: 7.5% is based off this, and it’s best understood as being the Publications value multiplied by the Normalised Citations Impact value.
- Number of Publications in the Top 10% Most Cited: this contributes 12.5%, and is exactly what it says it is.
- Percentage of Publications in the Top 10% Most Cited: Another 10% of the total, and is again exactly as it is written.
- International Collaboration Relative to Country: Proportion of the University’s papers that have an international co-author divided by the same figure for its country. This is 5% of the ranking.
- International Collaboration: Another 5%, and this is just the proportion of the university’s papers that have an international co-author.
- Scientific Excellence Indicators: 10% of the total, subdivided into total number of papers in the top 1% of the most cited, and what proportion of the total publications of the university that represents.
You can read more about the US News rankings here.
