For the second consecutive year the Universitat Rovira i Virgili has been included in the QS World University Rankings by Subject and has improved its international position with respect to the previous edition

According to the QS World University Rankings by Subject, the URV is well positioned internationally in the disciplines of chemistry and materials sciences. This rankings assesses the performance of every university in five knowledge areas: arts and humanities, engineering and technology, life sciences and medicine, natural sciences and social sciences. In this edition, it has assessed 48 disciplines. Last year the Universitat Rovira i Virgili was included for the first time as one of the top 450 universities in the discipline of chemistry. And now, for the second year running, it has improved its position and is now among the top 300 universities in the world. In this year’s edition, for the first time, the ranking has recognised the URV as one of the top 400 universities in the world in the discipline of Materials Science Of all the institutions assessed only the best 500 in these disciplines are actually ranked.

The Quacquarelli Symonds organization published the 2019 edition of the ranking last Wednesday. Four indicators have been used to produce the ranking. The first two are global surveys of academics and entrepreneurs from all over the world, which assess the international reputation of institutions. The other two indicators measure the impact of research by the number of times research is cited – the indicator in which the discipline of chemistry at the URV has been given the highest score – and the H index, which measures both productivity and the citation impact of the work published by a particular scientist. As far as the indicators are concerned, academic reputation has the greatest weight in the overall score (40%), while the other three are 20% each.

To appear in this subject ranking, institutions must teach bachelor’s degree and postgraduate courses, get more than a minimum score on the reputation, academic and entrepreneurial indicators, and, in the case of chemistry, have more than 110 Scopus-indexed publications in the last five years.

The best-positioned universities in the world in the highest number of disciplines are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California and the University of Harvard, all in the United States.

For further information, see QS World University Rankings by Subject 2019