TEHRAN – The Performance Rankings of Scientific Papers for World Universities, released by National Taiwan University (NTU), has listed 18 Iranian universities among the top 500 institutions of the world in 2023.

Tehran University of Medical Sciences won the best rank among Iranian universities. It ranked 16 in pharmacology and toxicology, Mehr reported.

Also, the University of Tehran ranked 25 in Energy Science and Engineering, 27 in Mechanical Engineering, and 31 in Chemical Engineering.

The Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities, also known as NTU Rankings, provides rankings by six fields including Agriculture, Engineering, Life Science, Medicine, Nature Sciences, and Social Sciences. The 6 fields cover 27 subjects.

They compare the scientific performance of the world's universities, so bigger universities have a better chance of being on the final list.

The final list of the world's top institutions is published based on academic publications, from three angles: research productivity, research impact, and research excellence, and eight indicators (number of articles 11 years ago, number of articles last year, number of citations 11 years ago, number of citations two years ago, average citations 11 years ago, h- index (a metric for evaluating the cumulative impact of an author's scholarly output and performance) two years ago, the number of highly cited papers 10 years ago, and the number of high-impact journals articles two years ago.

Other rankings

Iran ranked second with 80 universities included in D-8 group universities in 2022.

Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Indonesia have the largest number of universities in the ranking.

The most important criteria to evaluate the performance of D-8 group universities include research, innovation, education, and international activities.”

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, the University of Tehran, and Tarbiat Modares University ranked 4th, 5th, and 13th, respectively.

The performance of 20 out of the 80 Iranian universities has been analyzed as the top universities

Tehran University of Medical Sciences has won the first rank among the Iranian universities.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings (WUR) 2024 placed 73 Iranian universities among the top universities in the world in 10 out of 11 subject areas.

These ten subject rankings included arts and humanities; business and economics; clinical and health; computer science; education; engineering; life sciences; physical sciences; psychology; and social sciences. The eleventh subject was Law.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings (WUR) 2024 included 1,904 universities across 108 countries and regions

The Ranking is based on the new WUR 3.0 methodology, which includes 18 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across five areas: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry, and international outlook.

In this ranking by subject, 73 Iranian universities were included, and 44 out of 185 majors were ranked below 500, ISNA reported.

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

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.

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 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 the Shanghai Ranking 2023, according to the head of the Islamic World Science Citation (ISC) Database.   

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

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

MT/MG