TEHRAN – The 2024 edition of the Nature Index Research Leaders report has placed Iran 32nd among Research Leaders globally. The report is based on Nature Index data from January 1 to December 31, 2023.

Institute for Fundamental Sciences (IPM), University of Tehran, and Sharif University of Technology are ranked first to third in the country.

The country is ranked second in Physical Sciences, third in Chemistry, as well as Health Sciences, fourth in Earth and Environmental Sciences, and fifth in Biological Sciences in the region.

Iran’s best global ranking is in Physical Sciences with the rank of 27.

The Nature Index is an open database of author affiliations and institutional relationships. The Index tracks contributions to research articles published in high-quality natural science and health science journals, chosen based on reputation by an independent group of researchers.

The Nature Index provides absolute Count and fractional share counts of article publications at the institutional and national levels and, as such, is an indicator of global high-quality research output and collaboration.

Data in the Nature Index are updated regularly, with the most recent 12 months. The database is compiled by Nature Research Intelligence, part of Springer Nature.

Journal and article selection

The journals included in the Nature Index were selected, irrespective of publisher, by actively publishing researchers in the natural sciences.

Researchers were asked to list the journals in which they would most like to publish their best work. They were asked to focus on their perception of the journals’ content, rather than measures such as the Journal Impact Factor.

The limitations

The Nature Index tracks a small proportion of the total number of research articles published, and they cover the natural sciences and health sciences only. There are many factors that determine an institution’s output in the Nature Index. The size of the institution is a major factor, as is the composition of research specialties within the institution.

The Nature Index does not attempt to normalize data for such factors. Rather it presents raw data that can contribute to an analysis.

An institution’s output in the Nature Index can be located globally, by country or by region, across the five broad fields of biological sciences, chemistry, Earth and environmental sciences, health sciences, and physical sciences; and by sector whether academic, government, corporate, healthcare, or NGO.

Article output for an institution, country/territory, or region is counted in two ways.

Count: A Count of one is assigned to an institution or location if one or more authors of the research article are from that institution or location, regardless of how many co-authors there are from outside that institution or location.

Share: Nature Index’s signature metric, Share, is a fractional count that takes into account the proportion of authors from an institution or country/region and the number of affiliated institutions per article.

For the calculation of Share, all authors are considered to have contributed equally to the article. The maximum combined Share for any article is 1.0.

Iran ranks 14th for most-cited institutes

The number of top Iranian universities and research institutes in the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database has increased from 115 last year to 134 this year, ranking the country 14th worldwide, and second among Islamic countries, the Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC) has reported.

Essential Science Indicators, or ESI, is a fundamental analysis and evaluation tool that reveals emerging science trends, as well as the performance of influential individuals, academic institutions, papers, journals, countries, and regions in various fields of scientific research.

A total of 9,019 universities and research institutes in all subject areas are ranked by the ESI database in a ten-year period, from 2014 to 2024.

Iran's top universities and research institutes are present in 19 subject areas, and the largest number is in the clinical medicine subject area with 74 universities and research institutes.
The number of institutions in the subject areas of engineering was 67, chemistry 57, agricultural sciences 29, materials sciences 28, pharmacology and toxicology 27, social sciences, general sciences 21.

Also, the number of institutions in the fields of plant and animal sciences, and environment/ecology 20 each, neuroscience and behavior 18, biology and biochemistry 17, computer science 15, immunology 10, geology 8, molecular biology and genetics and physics 5 each, microbiology and psychiatry and psychology 3 each and mathematics one.

The ranking includes 35 Islamic countries. Turkey ranks first among Islamic nations, followed by Iran in second place.

Also, Turkey with 149 universities and research institutes ranks 12th in the world.

Egypt (with 48 universities and research institutes) ranks 25th, Pakistan (with 46 universities) ranks 27th, and Saudi Arabia (with 45 universities) ranks 38th, respectively.

Recent rankings

The Times Higher Education (THE) included 33 universities from Iran among the top 1,500 universities pursuing sustainable development goals (SDG) compared to 27 universities in 2023.

THE evaluated 2,152 universities from 125 countries to produce the overall Impact Ranking for 2024.

A total of 29 Iranian universities were mentioned in the overall table including Alzahra University, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Kerman University of Medical Sciences (ranking 401- 600); and Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Mehr news agency reported.

Amirkabir University of Technology and Sharif University of Technology achieved the highest ranking in industry innovation and infrastructure, ranking 27.

The 21st edition of the QS World University Rankings (2025)  placed nine Iranian universities among the world’s top institutes, compared with seven universities in 2024.

This year's ranking featured over 1,500 institutions across 105 higher education systems.

Sharif University of Technology (with a rank of 342), University of Tehran (368), Amirkabir University of Technology (403), Iran University of Science and Technology (436), and Isfahan University of Technology (489) were ranked first to fifth, respectively.

A total of 29 Islamic countries with 270 universities were included in this ranking.

Malaysia, Indonesia, and Turkey ranked first to third respectively in terms of the number of universities. Iran ranked 11th among Islamic nations in this year's QS ranking.

SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) 2024  placed 197 Iranian universities among the top institutions in the world compared to 194 universities in 2023.

The SIR is a classification of academic and research-related institutions ranked by a composite indicator that combines three different sets of indicators based on research performance, innovation outputs, and societal impact measured by their web visibility.

The 14th edition of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject 2024 included 17 Iranian universities in 17 subject entries, compared with 16 universities in 2023.

MT/MG