High Impact Universities: “it’s all about research impact”
Following the rash of recent world league table publications here is one that is based primarily on research. The rankings measure universities’ Research Performance Index or RPI. The table has been developed at the University of Western Australia and can be found here.
The Top 20 is:
1 Harvard University
2 Stanford University
3 MIT
4 University of California, Los Angeles
5 University of California, Berkeley
6 University of Michigan
7 University of Washington
8 University of Pennsylvania
9 Johns Hopkins University
10 University of California, San Diego
11 Columbia University
12 University of Minnesota
13 University of Cambridge
14 University of Toronto
15 University of Chicago
16 Cornell University
17 University of Oxford
18 University of Wisconsin, Madison
19 Yale University
20 Pennsylvania State University
The methodology is based on a “simple process” which delivers your RPI for each broad subject area/faculty
Step 1. calculate the g-index (a numerical measure of the quality and consistency of publication or research output) for each faculty of the particular university
Step 2. divide or normalize the g-index for each faculty by that of the highest globally performing faculty
Step 3. average or sum the normalized faculty indices to arrive at a final RPI value for a particular university
Comparisons with the recent Times Higher Education and QS tables show some major similarities, they are all US dominated, but also some marked differences, particularly for Cambridge, Oxford and Yale.
