Most Cited Institutions: 1999-2009

A league table of the most cited institutions 1999-2009 has been published by ScienceWatch.com

The list is dominated by US universities with 14 entries and only three UK entries and one each from Germany, Canada and Japan. Harvard is, inevitably, top:

These institutions all produce a high volume of papers resulting in extremely high citation counts—the top six institutions have over one million citations to their credit, and cite counts for the remaining 14 are all well over a half-million.

Perhaps not that startling a table but nevertheless interesting

1 HARVARD UNIV
2 MAX PLANCK SOCIETY
3 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV
4 UNIV WASHINGTON
5 STANFORD UNIV
6 UNIV CALIF LOS ANGELES
7 UNIV MICHIGAN
8 UNIV CALIF BERKELEY
9 UNIV CALIF SAN FRANCISCO
10 UNIV PENN
11 UNIV TOKYO
12 UNIV CALIF SAN DIEGO
13 UNIV TORONTO
14 UCL
15 COLUMBIA UNIV
16 YALE UNIV
17 MIT
18 UNIV CAMBRIDGE
19 UNIV OXFORD
20 UNIV WISCONSIN

The listing of the top 20 institutions which attracted the highest total citations to their papers published in Thomson Reuters-indexed journals over all 22 fields in the database. These institutions are the top 20 out of a pool of 4,050 institutions comprising the top 1% ranked by total citation count over all fields.

More details are on the website.

Latest 2009 world university league table rankings from THE

Latest 2009 world rankings from THE and QS

The University world rankings have been published in THE. The top 25 is as follows:

2009
1 Harvard University (1 in 2008)
2 University of Cambridge (3)
3 Yale University (2)
4 University College London (7)
5= Imperial College London (6)
5= University of Oxford (4)
7 University of Chicago (8)
8 Princeton University (12)
9 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (9)
10 California Institute of Technology (5)
11 Columbia University (10)
12 University of Pennsylvania (11)
13 Johns Hopkins University (13=)
14 Duke University (13=)
15 Cornell University (15)
16 Stanford University (17)
17 Australian National University (16)
18 McGill University (20)
19 University of Michigan (18)
20= Eth Zurich (24)
20= University of Edinburgh (23)
22 University of Tokyo (19)
23 King’s College London (22)
24 University of Hong Kong (26)
25 Kyoto University (25)

The full tables, including subject rankings, should be available here.

The key points noted about the top 100:

* A dramatic fall in the number of North American universities in the top 100, from 42 in 2008 to 36 in 2009, reflects the growing presence and impact of Asian and European institutions on the world higher education stage. Of these, McGill was the highest ranked Canadian University, up two places at 18th.
* There are 39 European universities in the top 100, up from 36 in 2008. ETH Zurich is the top ranked continental European university at 20th place.
* The number of Asian universities in the top 100 also increased – from 14 to 16 institutions. The University of Tokyo, at 22nd, is the highest ranked Asian university, ahead of the University of Hong Kong at 24th

Sunday Times League Table

Sunday Times League Table is now out

The 2010 Sunday Times Good University Guide. Change at the top but not really “a year of upheaval” as billed:

1. Oxford (2)
2. Cambridge (1)
3. Imperial (3)
4. UCL (6)
5. St Andrews (5)
6. Warwick (7)
7. Durham (8)
8. York (9)
9. LSE (4)
10. Bristol (16)
11. Bath (10)
12. Southampton (12)
13. King’s College London (17)
14. Nottingham (13)
15= Edinburgh (15)
15= Loughborough (11)
17. Exeter (14)
18. Sheffield (19)
19. Lancaster (20)
20= Leicester (18)
20= Birmingham

The University of Oxford is on something of a winning streak. After a second successive victory over Cambridge in the boat race this year, the university has now knocked its light-blue rival off the top of The Sunday Times university league table for the first time.

This feat, after 11 years in second place, earns Oxford The Sunday Times University of the Year award. It edged narrowly ahead of its principal British rival in a year of upheaval in our league table, prompted by the first research assessments in seven years and the move to measuring teaching quality primarily by levels of student satisfaction expressed through the annual national student survey (NSS).

Not really a huge change to the table since last year apart from the diversion of a bit of a boat race going on at the top. Although new NSS scores and 2008 RAE do figure they don’t seem to have made a big difference. The numbers involved in the survey of Heads and peers, which results in one indicator, aren’t obviously identified.

Cambridge avoids extra accountability (for a while at least)

“Cambridge dons retain control of university”

According to the Guardian, Cambridge has fended off pressure to change the composition of its Council to include a lay majority. The extent of the additional accountability requirement which has been agreed seems to be an annual meeting between the chair of the Audit Committee and a Hefce officer:

The ancient university has agreed to provide more information to account for the public money it receives from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) — more than £181m in the coming year — but has resisted pressure to have a majority of external members on its governing council. A review by Hefce of how the university accounts for public funds concluded: “We are able to place reliance on the University of Cambridge’s accountability information. This will be strengthened by a new annual process that has been introduced to provide additional assurance on the use of public funds, given that the university does not currently have a lay majority on its council.”

However, the funding council appears satisfied that a “modest extension of its public accountability” — essentially a meeting between the chair of the university’s audit committee (an external member) and a Hefce officer — will meet its needs. Asked if Hefce had reached a face-saving compromise, a spokesman replied: “We recognise with both universities that governance reform will take some time. In the case of Cambridge, in recognition of the fact that the university does not feel able to move to a lay majority on its council at this time, we have agreed that we will undertake an additional annual assurance visit specifically to gain additional comfort about the use of public funds. We will operate this mechanism for three years and expect the university’s governance reform to continue moving forward in that time. At the end of three years, we will review the effectiveness of the annual assurance exercise.

Looks like a pretty good outcome for Cambridge this. The additional requirement seems extremely light touch and it will be interesting to see if anything emerges from these meetings and whether the university is pushed into making more substantial changes in the next three years.

Closing Oxbridge?

Not quite.

But in a recent entertaining debate in the US, it was proposed that three members of the Ivy league – Harvard, Yale and Princeton – be shut down altogether. A fanciful notion but it clearly gave rise to lots of deep-seated prejudice – largely from those who weren’t admitted in the past it would seem.

A similar proposition here in relation to Oxford and Cambridge (with all of their resources being distributed across the Russell Group, presumably) would attract even more enthusiastic (if misguided) support would be my guess.