Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities

The Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities is a ranking of world universities compiled by National Taiwan University annually since 2012.
This publication ranks world universities by a certain criteria of scientific paper volume, impact, and performance output. The ranking was originally published from 2007 to 2011 by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan and has been published since 2012 by the National Taiwan University. It uses bibliometric methods to analyze and rank the scientific paper performance. In addition to the overall ranking, it includes a list of the top universities in six fields and fourteen subjects.
The rankings were introduced in 2007. The original ranking methodology favored toward universities with medical schools. In 2008, HEEACT began publishing a "Field Based Ranking" including six fields: agriculture and environmental sciences, clinical medicine, engineering, computing, and technology, life sciences, natural sciences, and social sciences.
In 2010, HEEACT began publishing subject rankings in fields of various field of science and technology. Science fields are divided into physics, chemistry, mathematics, and geosciences. Technology fields are split up into electrical engineering, computer science, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, materials science, and civil engineering.
HEEACT ended the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities Project in 2012. Due to disagreement about ranking results, the Taiwanese education authorities announced that the government would no longer support the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan to do this ranking.

Methodology

The HEEACT rankings used the following criteria:

Research productivity —The number of published articles of the last 11 years and the number of articles of the current year.
Research impact —Number of citations of the last 11 years, the number of citations of the last two years, and the average number of citations of the last 11 years.
Research excellence —The h-index of the last two years, the number of highly cited papers, and the number of articles of the current year in high-impact journals.

Quantitative data were drawn from Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index. The data were normalized by faculty number to account for different institution sizes. The indicators used in this methodology highly emphasized research quality and short-term research performance.
The current NTU rankings use the following criteria:

Research productivity —The number of published articles of the last 11 years and the number of articles of the current year.
Research impact —Number of citations of the last 11 years, the number of citations of the last two years, and the average number of citations of the last 11 years.
Research excellence —The h-index of the last two years, the number of highly cited papers, and the number of articles of the current year in high-impact journals.
HEEACT World University Rankings (Top 50)

2024	2020	2010	Institution	Country
1	1	1	Harvard University
2	2	2	Stanford University
3	5	17	University College London
4	3	9	University of Toronto
5	6	10	University of Oxford
6	4	3	Johns Hopkins University
7	17	114	Tsinghua University
8	30	145	Zhejiang University
9	11	16	University of Cambridge
10	8	7	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
11	8	4	University of Washington
12	25	183	Shanghai Jiao Tong University
13	9	8	University of Michigan
14	14	21	Imperial College London
15	42		Paris Cité University
16	10	11	University of Pennsylvania
17	13	13	Columbia University
18	29	124	Peking University
19	12	5	University of California, Los Angeles
20	19	18	Yale University
21	38	84	National University of Singapore
22	18	12	University of California, San Diego
23	15	15	University of California, San Francisco
24	23	43	University of Melbourne
25	21	57	ETH Zurich
26	28	22	Cornell University
27	31	69	University of Sydney
28	22	53	University of Copenhagen
29	63	64	University of Amsterdam
30	16	6	University of California, Berkeley
31			Paris-Saclay University
32	56	332	Sun Yat-sen University
33	45	130	Monash University
34	20	19	Duke University
35	26		Sorbonne University
36	27	27	Northwestern University
37	33	32	University of British Columbia
38	67	473	Huazhong University of Science and Technology
39	62	230	Fudan University
40	39	95	University of Queensland
41	51	145	University of New South Wales
42	40	46	Mayo Clinic College of Medicine
43	44	55	King's College London
44	59	204	University of Science and Technology of China
45	32	25	Washington University in St. Louis
46	37	14	University of Tokyo
47	68	77	KU Leuven
48	34	23	University of Pittsburgh
49	53	243	Nanyang Technological University
50	88	565	Central South University

HEEACT World University Rankings (Top 20 by field)

Agriculture

Clinical Medicine

Engineering

Life Sciences

Natural Sciences

Social Sciences

HEEACT World University Rankings (Top 20 by subject)

Physics (includes Astronomy and Space Science)

Chemistry

Mathematics

Geosciences

Electrical Engineering

Computer Science

Civil Engineering (including Environmental Engineering)

Mechanical Engineering

Chemical Engineering (including Energy & Fuels)

Materials Science

Commentary

The Australian higher education indicated that the 2007 performance ranking of scientific papers for world universities produced by HEEACT is a useful addition to the present world university ranks because of its rigorous method and robust results, which are made possible by its more modest scope. There are more comments on the HEEACT rankings. The senior research fellow of Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, Wu Yi-shan, claimed that the HEEACT ranking is the best ranking system he has ever seen. Wu indicated that the HEEACT ranking considers both long-term and short-term performance of a university. The idea of combining long-term and short-term ranking indicators is a pioneering thought. Richard Holmes posted on University Ranking Watch and noted: "Although the Shanghai rankings show a high correlation with other rankings the HEEACT rankings from Taiwan do somewhat better." Vice-president Research for the University of Toronto, Professor Paul Young, remarked that "the HEEACT rankings are relatively new, they are an important and methodologically robust measure of the quantity and quality of research performed by universities around the world." The dean of academic affairs at National Taiwan University, Chiang Been-Huang, stated that "2009 Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities by HEEACT are conducted based on objective figures."