Uppsala University in top 100
Uppsala University continues to be ranked among the top 100 universities in the world. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt
Once again, this year Uppsala University appears in the top 100 when the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, lists the world’s foremost universities. Uppsala University’s position in 93rd place makes it second best in Sweden after Karolinska Institutet, which takes 50th place. Coming third in Sweden, Stockholm University has climbed to 100th place.
The world’s top three universities are all in the United States: Harvard University, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The top Scandinavian university is the University of Copenhagen, in 35th place.
The annual Shanghai Ranking consists of six separate indicators, all linked to research. These are based on publication and citation data from the Web of Science, the scientific journals Nature and Science, public registers and official lists of Nobel Prizes and other honours. The ranking can be said to measure research excellence with an emphasis on engineering and technology, natural sciences and medicine.
Compared with last year, Uppsala University is down five places.
Marginally lower
“Generally speaking, the University scores marginally lower in most indicators compared with last year. There is a slightly larger drop in the Highly Cited (HiCi) indicator, where the University is down 3.2 points. On the other hand, the score in Nature and Science, i.e. the number of publications in these journals, has gone up 2.8 points,” says Emma Östlund, Controller at the Planning Division, Uppsala University.
The criterion Highly Cited refers to the number of researchers whose work is most frequently cited by other researchers. The Shanghai Ranking bases this indicator on the annual list of the most cited researchers in their respective fields compiled by the company Clarivate. In 2024, Uppsala University had three researchers on that list: Dan Andersson, Misty Attwood and Helgi Schioth, all of whom are in the Disciplinary Domain of Medicine and Pharmacy.
“A more positive development, though, is that the score for the indicator Nature and Science, i.e. the number of publications in the journals Nature and Science, has increased for the third year in a row,” Östlund comments.
Åsa Malmberg