Useful Stats: Chinese Institute Issues Its 2004 World Academic Rankings

A recent collection of weekly headlines gathered by the Montana Associated Technology Roundtables brought to our attention the annual world academic rankings compiled by the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

For the past two years, the school has identified the world's top 500 academic institutions based on a weighted scale of six indicators:

• Alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (10%)
• Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20%)
• Highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories (20%)
• Articles published in Nature and Science (20%) -- Note: For institutions specialized in humanities and social sciences such as London School of Economics, N&S is not considered, and the weight of N&S is relocated to other indicators.
• Articles in Science Citation Index-expanded and Social Science Citation Index (20%)
• Academic performance with respect to the size of an institution (10%)

For each indicator, the highest-scoring institution is assigned a score of 100, and other institutions are calculated as a percentage of the top score. The distribution of data for each indicator is examined for any significant distorting effect. Standard statistical techniques are used to adjust the indicator if necessary.

Further evidence of U.S. research leadership eroding? U.S. institutions captured 57 of the top 100 rankings in 2003 and "only" 54 in 2004.

The 2004 and 2003 rankings are available at: http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/2004Main.htm