The Round University Rankings (RUR), the latest edition of which has been released, were formerly based in Moscow but have moved to Tbilisi, Georgia. They are, however, still perceived as a Russian publication and have been subject to Western sanctions since 2022, including cutting off survey and bibliometric data from Clarivate.
Following these sanctions, RUR introduced significant methodological changes including the use of data from Lens instead of Web of Science and replacing the Clarivate research reputation surveys with social media data. These innovations have been successful and will probably be copied by other rankings.
There are twenty indicators for the RUR World University Rankings grouped into four categories: Teaching (40%), Research (40%), International Diversity (10%), and Financial Stability (10%). Each group contains five indicators. The Teaching metrics include measures of income and numbers of doctoral graduates and Research is assessed by citations, papers, graduate degrees, and social media, which replaces world research reputation.
The top ten of the current rankings looks quite familiar, headed by Harvard, followed by Caltech, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania. However, the number of universities from Central Asia and the Caucasus, the Middle East, and Africa has increased very rapidly in the last five years. Meanwhile, Asian universities have posted some very good performances. Peking University is in 6th place, Pohang University of Science and Technology 46th, National Taiwan University 49th, and the Indian University of Technology Kharagpur 59th.
Source:
ROUND UNIVERSITY RANKING