In 2020, the competition among the ranking’s participants grew fiercer, as this year THE WUR included 1,527 universities – that is 130 more than last year. Russia is now represented by 48 universities compared to 39 in 2019.
A university’s position in the ranking is based on five main performance indicators: Teaching, Research, Citations, International Outlook and Industry Income.
The data for the ranking are collected from three sources: statistics provided by the universities, the Scopus database, and a survey of academic experts.
This year, ITMO University demonstrated traditionally high results in the Industry Income track. While last year this parameter received 84.6 points from THE, in 2020, it’s grown to 90.1, placing ITMO at the 75th position globally (compared to last year’s 86th). Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Moscow Engineering Physics Institute have similar results.
The reputation growth in the Teaching and Research parameters is also remarkable. It is demonstrated by ITMO taking the 327th and 464th positions respectively in these tracks. Growth in the International Outlook area (from 62.1 to 63.4 in 2020) comes from the increased percent of international students and lecturers.
“The biggest growth prospects for ITMO in the ranking hide in the Citations area, which is evaluated at THE by the field-wise citation impact of the university’s publications. This year, the authors of THE WUR considered the publications of 2015-2019 and their citation impact in 2015-2020,” comments Ilya Kuftiryov, the head of ITMO University’s Rankings Research Center. “The share of articles published as a result of international collaboration is traditionally high, while their quality is progressively getting better. The secret to success of the world’s leading universities is not just in the great number of international publications but in the fact that these publications are the result of cutting-edge research that defines the future of science for years ahead. ITMO’s strategic task lies in outlining the fields for such research endeavors and achieving leading positions in each of them. The university is actively working on that.”
We’ll also note that this year ITMO was included in the list of the world’s top 400 universities in the QS World University Rankings, the top-1000 of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), and the Diamond League of the Ranking of Russian Universities (RUR).
