This year’s edition of a global university ranking that delves into research statistics has shown that researchers at Brunel University of London are publishing papers that are highly cited by others across the academic disciplines.
The CTWS Leiden Ranking 2024 lists Brunel as 22nd in the UK, and 111th in the world, for an indicator which shows the proportion of a university’s papers that, compared with other publications in the same scientific field, belong in the top 10% most frequently cited.
When others cite Brunel research, it means they’re using Brunel researchers’ findings as a source in their own studies. So across the scientific fields the ranking looks at – such as ‘Physical sciences and engineering’ and ‘Social sciences and humanities’ – Brunel research is a significant contributor to scientific progress.
The annual ranking has been published since 2007 by a team at Leiden University in the Netherlands: the Centre for Science and Technology Studies, or CTWS for short in Dutch. It’s an independent ranking that doesn’t rely on any data submitted from universities.
Instead, they take bibliographic data – information about published papers – from the Web of Science database produced by renowned analytics company Clarivate. Then they select universities anywhere in the world who have published enough papers to meet their inclusion requirement. For this year’s ranking, 1,506 universities in total across 72 countries are research-intensive enough to exceed this threshold, of which 63 universities are in the UK.
CTWS assert that universities are complex institutions whose performance can’t be represented by a single number, so they publish a variety of indicators to allow for exploration from different angles.
Other indicators in this year’s Leiden Ranking demonstrate just how international Brunel’s research is. For example, they reveal the proportion of a university’s publications that have been co-authored with researchers in one or more other countries. For this measure of international collaboration, 73% of Brunel’s research is done this way, putting the university 5th in the UK and 65th in the world. And when the proportion of long-distance collaborations is looked at – working with researchers that, broadly speaking, are based outside Europe, the Middle East and North Africa – then Brunel ranks 3rd in the UK and 82nd in the world.
“The Leiden Ranking provides yet another demonstration of how truly international Brunel’s research is,” said Prof Hua Zhao, Brunel’s Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research. “It not only involves collaborations with researchers across the world, but also has demonstrable global impact, and is cited extensively across many scientific fields.
“I am proud of what Brunel’s research community – all our research staff, and those who support them – continues to achieve.”
Reported by:
Joe Buchanunn,
Media Relations
+44 (0)1895 268821
joe.buchanunn@brunel.ac.uk