UT in rankings
The University of Tartu is featured in a growing number of international university ranking lists. Below you will find a brief overview of major and more widely-followed global university rankings, as well as of UT’s position in them.
QS World University Rankings
The QS World University Ranking has been produced annually since 2004 by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), British company specialising in educational consultancy. The QS list is largely based on the reputation of an educational institution, partly among academics but also among employers. It also rates faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, and the proportion of international faculty and students. In the latest edition of the ranking, the University of Tartu features at number 347 in the overall list of world's top 800 universities.
In addition to its general ranking list, QS also ranks universities by academic disciplines organized into 5 broad fields: Arts & Humanities; Engineering & Technology; Life Sciences& Medicine; Natural Sciences; and Social Sciences & Management. These annual rankings are based on academic reputation, employer reputation and research impact. According to the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2016, UT has been ranked among the world's leading universities in six fields: Communication & Media Studies (101-150); Linguistics (101-150); English Language and Literature (251-300); Modern Languages (251-300); Medicine (301-400); and Computer Science and Information Systems (401-500).
In 2014 QS launched a new ranking list – a dedicated ranking of the top universities in Emerging Europe and Central Asia (QS University Rankings: EECA). Compared to the last year’s pilot edition, UT has moved up one place and is now ranked 4th.
THE World University Rankings
The British magazine Times Higher Education has published its global list of universities since 2004.
THE previously worked together with the British consultancy company QS, but in 2010 THE entered into a partnership with Thomson Reuters and the list was completely redesigned. As another important change, as of 2015 all the publication, citation and reputation data are no longer obtained from Thomson Reuters (Web of Science), but from Elsevier (Scopus). THE assesses the institutions on the basis of 13 indicators in the areas of teaching, research and innovation. In addition to performance in the field of research and education, it also considers the international reputation and international outlook of institutions. In this ranking, UT is placed in the 301–350 range.
THE also publishes The Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings. The ranking considers universities of 48 countries, which meet the Financial Times Stock Exchange’s classification for emerging or quickly developing economies, incl. the so called BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South-Africa. 35 countries are represented in the ranking of 200 best universities. The ranking compares universities on the basis of 13 performance indicators, which describe the study environment, research significance, academic reputation, revenue, innovation and the extent of internationalization. UT is placed 31st in this ranking.
U.S. News Best Global Universities Ranking
In 2014 the American journal U.S. News started publishing a worldwide ranking list of universities powered by Thomson Reuters InCitesTM research analytics solutions. The ranking indicators for the overall rankings include those that measure a university's global and regional reputation; academic research performance using bibliometric indicators such as citations and publications; and school-level data on faculty and Ph.D. graduates. In the inaugural edition, published in 2014, UT was ranked 467. Currently, UT has fell 24 places to 491 (218 in Europe).
U.S. News also ranks world's best universities by performance in specific fields of research. The subject-specific rankings use a separate methodology, based on academic research performance in those subjects. U.S. News uses various bibliometric measures, as well as indicators for global and regional reputation in that specific subject. In 2015, UT placed 142 in the field of Environment/Ecology, and 147 in Plant and Animal Science.
NTU Ranking
Since 2012, the National Taiwan University publishes the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities, previously known as the HEEACT Ranking. The ranking is based on research publication exclusively. It provides a list of world's top 500 universities, based on eight criteria derived from Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science citation impact indicators. In addition to the overall performance ranking, NTU also offers six field-based rankings and 14 subject-based rankings.
In the 2016 ranking, the University of Tartu holds the 456th place worldwide. In the subject-specific rankings, UT placed 127th in Plant & Animal Science and 192nd in Environment/Ecology.
Webometrics Ranking of World Universities
Webometrics Ranking of World Universities is produced by Cybermetrics Lab, a sub division of the Spanish National Research Council (Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas – CSIC). The list has been published since 2004 and ranks all the world’s universities according to their online presence. It is published twice a year, in January and July.
The ranking list measures the web performance of universities with an independent web domain – i.e. the amount, visibility and effect of the universities’ websites, with particular emphasis on scientific production. The most recent CSIC measurement, conducted in July 2016, has the University of Tartu at 447th place worldwide.
The CWTS Leiden Ranking
The CWTS Leiden Ranking is published by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), a research unit within Leiden University. The ranking employs a sophisticated set of bibliometric indicators, based on the data from Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science, to produce a list of top 750 universities worldwide.
The CWTS Leiden Ranking 2015 placed UT 552nd globally and 248th in Europe.