The latest edition of the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, often known as the Shanghai Subject Rankings, has been released. The methodology is rather different from the Academic Ranking of World Universities, comprising nine indicators in five categories.
The five categories are:
- World Class Faculty; including faculty “who have received significant international academic awards within an Academic Subject from 1981 to 2025”, highly cited researchers, editors of major international journals, and leaders of major international academic organisations
- World Class Output; top journal papers and “total number of the staff of an institution winning a significant award in an Academic Subject during the period of 1901-2025”
- High-Quality Research; papers published in journals with a Q1 Journal Impact Factor
- Research Impact; Category Normalized Citation Impact of papers published in 2012-2025
- International Collaboration; publications with one or more international collaborators.
The USA and Europe remain dominant in many disciplines. For example, Princeton leads for mathematics, followed by Paris-Saclay University, University of Oxford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Cambridge, and Sorbonne University. For economics, the University of Chicago is in the lead and the top ten consists of nine US institutions and the London School of Economics.
Mainland China, however, has a commanding presence in the engineering subjects, while South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong also perform well in these and some other disciplines.
The latest rankings also show that African and Middle Eastern universities, including the University of Cape Town, Cairo University, King Abullah University of Science and Technology, and King Saud University have established themselves in medicine, pharmacy, computer science and agricultural sciences.
Source:
SHANGHAI RANKING