The 2018 edition of the ranking places the URV in the 401-500 section for the third year running

On 5 September, Times Higher Education (THE) presented the results of its World University Rankings 2018 in which it lists the top 1000 universities in the world. As in the 2016 and 2017 editions, the URV has been placed in the 401-500 section of the list. The University was given a score of 39.9, an increase of more than two points on last year (37.5). The URV’s position in the ranking once again confirms its international competitiveness.

The “THE World University Rankings” establish standards for the core activities of a global research university and is based on a combination of thirteen indicators from five main ambits that are weighted as follows: teaching (30%), research (30%), citations (30%), international outlook (7.5%) and transfer (2.5%).

The URV has improved in four out of these five areas: in teaching it increased from 21.5 to 22.2 and in research from 15.8 to 17.2. The URV’s best score is for citations (i.e. the impact of its researchers’ publications), for which it was awarded 76.4 points, an increase over the 72.1 points from the previous year. This ambit evaluates research impact by calculating the number of times a publication is cited by other researchers around the world. The University has also increased its score by more than two points in internationalisation (from 45.5 to 47.7) and has suffered only a slight decrease in transfer (from 35.2 to 34.5).

The University is in sixth place out of the 29 Spanish universities that appear on the ranking, a position it shares with the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Both are ranked between 401 and 500 in the world because “THE World University Rankings” does not give specific numerical positions to the 100 universities in this section. Three Catalan universities head the list of the best universities in Spain: the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (140), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (147) and the Universitat de Barcelona (201-250).

The 2018 edition of the ranking highlights the dominance of British and American universities. The top five positions are occupied by Oxford, Cambridge, the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the MIT.

The Young University Ranking, which is also drawn up by Times Higher Education, places the URV in 76th position out of a list of the top 200 universities in the world under the age of fifty. The aim of this ranking is to demonstrate that excellence can be achieved in a relatively short period of time.

Ten important areas in the Shanghai ranking

The 2017 edition of the Shanghai ranking published in August places the URV in the 601-700 section of the top 800 universities in the world. The ranking also evaluates universities in terms of their performance in ten important individual academic areas.

In this regard, the URV obtained the following scores: in natural sciences, chemistry is placed in the 201-300 section and geography is between 151-200; in engineering the areas of electricity and electronic, instrumentation and technology and chemical engineering are in the 201-300 section, and computer sciences and environmental sciences are in 301-400. The area of biological sciences is in position 401-500, public health is in position 301-400 and pharmacy is in position 401-500.