Iranian universities in the world rankings systems

The Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2023 use the same 13 performance indicators as the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, but they are recalibrated to reflect the attributes of Asia’s institutions.

The universities are judged across all their core missions – teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook – to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons available.

The Sharif University of Technology is ranked first in the country and 64th in Asia. The position of two Iranian institutions is also mentioned as a reporter.

In the 2023 edition of the Times Higher Education’s Asian University Ranking System, the names of 928 institutions from 36 Asian countries are included in the final list. In the previous edition of this ranking system, 58 universities from Iran were among the top institutions in Asia, IRNA reported.

In the 2022 edition of the ranking system, 829 institutions from Asian countries were ranked in the final list.

The Times Higher Education Ranking places Asia's leading institutions in five areas of education (with a weight of 25 percent), global outlook (with a weight of 7.5 percent), research (with a weight of 30 percent), citations (with a weight of 30 percent), and industrial incomes (with a weight of 7.5 percent), evaluating them quantitatively based on 13 criteria.

 ****** World ranking

The Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2023 has placed 29 Iranian institutions among the world’s top 1,000 universities.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia (18), South Korea (18), Taiwan (16), Russia (15), Switzerland (15), Pakistan (14), Netherlands (13), Egypt (13), Finland (12), Belgium (12), and Sweden (11) follow Irn in the ranking.

The United States (154), the United Kingdom (94), China (59), Italy (49), Germany (49), Australia (44), India (38), Spain (36), France (36), Japan (33), and Canada (32) ranked first to eleventh.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023 include 1,799 universities across 104 countries and regions, making them the largest and most diverse university rankings to date.

The table is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook.

This year’s ranking analyzed over 121 million citations across more than 15.5 million research publications and included survey responses from 40,000 scholars globally. Overall, we collected over 680,000 data points from more than 2,500 institutions that submitted data.

In the 2023 ranking of the Times Higher Education Institute, which was published in 2022, the names of 66 Iranian institutions were included in the list of the world's top institutions in 10 different scientific fields, and in total, the names of these institutions were repeated 167 times in scientific fields.

These 10 scientific fields include "arts and humanities", "business and economics", "clinical medical sciences, basic medicine and health", "computer sciences", "educational sciences", "biological sciences", "physical sciences", "engineering and technology", "law and psychology" and "social sciences".

In the 2023 ranking of the Times Higher Education Institute, which was published in 2022, the names of 66 Iranian institutions were included in the list of the world's top institutions in 10 different scientific fields, and in total, the names of these institutions were repeated 167 times in scientific fields.

These 10 scientific fields include "arts and humanities", "business and economics", "clinical medical sciences, basic medicine and health", "computer sciences", "educational sciences", "biological sciences", "physical sciences", "engineering and technology", "law and psychology" and "social sciences".

Reviewing the status of universities worldwide shows that the number of Iranian universities has increased in nearly all subject rankings.

At the beginning of its formation, rating systems provided a comprehensive view of institutions and evaluated them from all aspects and as a whole. But in the past few years, many of these systems evaluate and rank institutions in various scientific fields.

This new ranking method has emerged to meet the needs of users who seek to know the position of an institution in a special field.

Some of these systems evaluate broad scientific fields such as humanities and social sciences, technical and engineering, and medicine, and others measure special fields such as chemistry, mathematics, artificial intelligence, anthropology, and nursing in institutions.

According to the latest statistics of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, 1,452 scientific journals are being published in the country.

Out of all the mentioned journals, 289 are indexed in the Scopus database and 67 journals are indexed in the Web of Science database.

The number of top Iranian universities and research institutions in the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database has increased from 112 last year (March 2022-March 2023) to 115 this year, the Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC) has reported.

Essential Science Indicators, or ESI, is a fundamental analysis and evaluation tool that reveals emerging science trends, as well as the performance of influential individuals, academic institutions, papers, journals, countries, and regions in various fields of scientific research.

According to the latest bi-monthly edition of the ESI database, the number of the world's top universities and research institutions in all subject areas is 8,557, of which 115 universities and research institutions from the Islamic Republic of Iran are on this list.

The number of top Iranian universities and research institutions in this database has increased from 112 last year to 115 this year.

Iran's top universities and research institutions are present in 19 subject areas, and the largest number is in the engineering subject area with 59 universities and research institutions.

The number of institutions in the fields of clinical medicine was 57, chemistry 50, material sciences 25, agricultural sciences 23, pharmacology and toxicology 19, plant and animal sciences 16, environment/ecology 15, social sciences, biology and biochemistry, and computer sciences 13 each.

Meanwhile, the number of institutions in the fields of neuroscience and behavior was 7, geology 6, physics and immunology 5 each, molecular biology and genetics 4, mathematics and microbiology 2 each, and psychiatry/psychology 1.

With 136 universities and research institutions, Turkey ranks 13th in the world and Iran ranks 14th in the world. After Iran and among Islamic countries, Saudi Arabia ranks 23rd in the world with 41 universities and research institutions, and Egypt ranks 24th in the world with 39 universities and research institutions. Pakistan ranks 25th in the world with 37 universities and research institutions.

ISC is the third internationally accredited citation center established in Iran based on a resolution adopted in 2008 by the 4th Meeting of the Islamic Ministers of Higher Education (ICMHESR) in Baku, the capital of the Republic of Azerbaijan, to index, evaluate and publish scientific productions in Islamic countries.

In “ISC world university rankings by subject” includes 4 major criteria of Education, Research, International Activity, and Innovation.

Courtesy of Tehran Times