In this year’s edition of the two rankings the University is classified in the 501-600 band and is the fourth highest Catalan university

On 11 September, Times Higher Education (THE) published the results of its World University Rankings 2020, which evaluate the top 1396 universities in the world. In this edition of the ranking, the URV has been placed in the 501-600 band on the list.

The URV improved its score in the areas of research, internationalisation and transfer. The best score is again for citations (the impact of researchers’ publications), where it was awarded 67.6 points. This criterion examines the influence of research by calculating the number of times a study is cited by other researchers around the world.

The URV is the 7th highest ranked university out of the 45 Spanish universities that make the list, a position it shares with the UOC and the Complutense de Madrid. All three are in the 501-600 band. Three Catalan universities top the list of the best universities in Spain: the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (143), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (154) and the Universitat de Barcelona (201-250). The URV shares 4th position among the Catalan universities with the UOC.

The 2020 edition of the ranking shows again the domination of the British and North American universities. The top five positions are occupied by the University of Oxford, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Cambridge, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ninety-two countries are represented on the ranking.

Improved position on the Shanghai ranking

In the 2019 edition of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), published in August, the URV is in the 501-600 band of the top 1000 universities in the world. In this edition of the ranking, headed by the universities of Harvard, Stanford and Cambridge, the URV has increased its position from last year, when it was placed in the 701-800 band.

The rise in position is due to improved scores for the indicators: Highly Cited Researchers, articles published in Nature and Science, publications indexed on the Web of Science, and performance. For the latter indicator, the URV is situated in 3rd position among the Spanish universities, behind the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona.

Overall, the URV is in 14th place out of the 38 Spanish universities in the ranking, in the same position as the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, the Universitat Jaume I and the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. Among the Catalan universities, the URV if 4th behind UB (151-200), the UAB (201-300) and the UPF (301-400).