Shanghai Ranking 2016: five subject rankings results announced

Shanghai Ranking Consultancy has released the top universities in five broad subject fields, as part of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2016.

The ARWU-FIELD 2016 ranks the best universities for Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences, Life and Agriculture Sciences, Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy, and Social Sciences.

Harvard University takes the top spot in three of the five rankings, which are all heavily dominated by American universities in the highest positions.

Although US and UK universities together take between 30 and 60 per cent of each ranking, this year’s results show an increasing presence of Chinese universities.

China overtakes the UK to become the second most represented country in both the natural sciences and the engineering rankings.

Other prominent countries with a high number of universities across the five rankings are Germany, Canada and Australia.

German universities hold a significant proportion of the positions in the natural sciences, life sciences and medicine rankings, and Canada is particularly well-represented in the social sciences ranking.

Universities in Japan, Switzerland, Singapore and Saudi Arabia feature in the top 10 of some of the rankings, alongside the usual suspects in the UK, and the United States.

The ARWU-FIELD rankings have been published annually by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy since 2007.

For each of the five broad subjects, 200 universities are ranked using indicators which include the number of Nobel prize-winning alumni, the number of highly cited researchers and the percentage of articles published in top journals.

Results of Shanghai Ranking’s ARWU-FIELD differ significantly from the Times Higher Education’s subject rankings.