TEHRAN - The second edition of the Webometrics ranking 2023 of the World Universities has ranked 440 Iranian institutions among 30,000 top universities worldwide.

Tehran University, ranked 305 in the world, is the top among Iranian institutions on the list followed by Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Sharif University of Technology, AmirKabir University of Technology, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran Science and Technology, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and Iran Medical Sciences.

Webometrics is an internationally recognized university ranking system that employs a combination of indicators to evaluate universities. 

These indicators include Visibility (or Impact), which measures the influence of web content; Transparency (or Openness), which considers the researchers cited the most; and Excellence, determined by the most cited scientific publication.

The Webometrics ranking system is published by Cybermetrics Lab, a research group affiliated with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) based in Madrid, Spain. This ranking undergoes biannual updates in January and July each year, ensuring that the evaluations remain current and relevant for universities worldwide.

Also, based on the Webometrics ranking report in July 2023, Harvard University, Stanford University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are the top three ranking universities worldwide in Webometrics followed by Oxford University, Berkeley University in California, University of Michigan, Cornell University in New York, University Washington, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.

Other rankings

Multiple organizations annually rank universities around the world based on different criteria.

Each system takes into account specific metrics including scientific impact, international faculty members, elite students, number of professors and students winning scientific awards, graduate employment, scientific inventions, and validity of the published articles in specific time intervals.

A look at Iran’s universities in these systems over the past decade shows that these universities have had an upward movement, standing above other Islamic countries, evidently.

The first edition of the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities 2023, in June, ranked 457 Iranian institutions among around 32,000 top universities across the world.

The University of Tehran tops the list of Iranian universities included in this ranking, followed by Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Sharif University of Technology, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran University of Science and Technology, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, and Mashhad University of Medical Sciences.

The Academic Ranking of the World Universities (ARWU), also known as Shanghai Ranking, has placed ten universities from Iran among the top 1000 universities in the world in Shanghai ranking, 2023, according to the head of the Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC).              

The University of Tehran is among the top 500 universities in the world with a rank of 401-500, the best among Iranian universities, the ISC head Ahmad Fazelzadeh said, IRIB reported.

Tehran University of Medical Sciences (501-600), and Amirkabir University of Technology (601-700) were ranked second and third, respectively, he added.

In the 2023 edition of the Times Higher Education Young University Rankings which includes 605 universities, Iran became the third more represented nation with 39 institutions.

The ranking is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across five areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfers, industrial income, and international outlook.

The latest edition of the QS World University Rankings (2024) has placed seven Iranian universities among the world’s top institutes.

The ranking features 1,497 institutions worldwide based on the three indicators of Sustainability, Employment Outcomes, and International Research Network.

The Leiden ranking system published the 2023 report, according to which 46 Iranian universities were among the 1,411 top universities in the world. Among Islamic countries, Iran ranked first, followed by Turkey and Egypt with 36 and 13 universities, respectively.

In the 2023 edition of the Times Higher Education’s Asian University Ranking System, 669 institutions from 31 Asian countries are included and 65 Iranian universities are among the top Asian institutions.

According to the latest bi-monthly edition of the ESI database, the number of the world's top universities and research institutes in all subject areas is 8,557, of which 115 universities and research institutes from the Islamic Republic of Iran are on this list.

The number of top Iranian universities and research institutes has increased from 112 last year to 115 this year.

MT/MG