The University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) is a university ranking developed by the Informatics Institute of Middle East Technical University. Since 2010, it has been publishing annual national and global college and university rankings for top 2000 institutions. The scientometrics measurement of URAP is based on data obtained from the Institute for Scientific Information via Web of Science and inCites. For global rankings, URAP employs indicators of research performance including the number of articles, citation, total documents, article impact total, citation impact total, and international collaboration. In addition to global rankings, URAP publishes regional rankings for universities in Turkey using additional indicators such as the number of students and faculty members obtained from Center of Measuring, Selection and Placement ÖSYM.
Methodology URAP gathers data from international bibliometric databases such as Web of Science and InCites provided by the Institute for Scientific Information. URAP uses data of 2,500 Higher Education Institutions (HEI) with highest number of articles published. The overall score of each HEI is based on its performance over several indicators. Of 2500 selected HEIs, the top 2000 are included in the rankings published by URAP. Field based rankings are performed on 23 fields based on Australia ERA.
Indicators
URAP uses 6 main indicator to measure the academic performance. These indicators are number of articles, citation, total documents, article impact total, citation impact total, and international collaboration. The raw bibliometric data underlying URAP's 6 main indicators have highly skewed distribution. To address this issue, the median of the indicators have been used. The Delphi system was conducted with a group of experts to assign weighting scores to the indicators. Total score of 600 is distributed to indicators. URAP uses additional indicators for ranking universities in Turkey including the number of students and faculty members. The following table shows the indicators used for global rankings in URAP as of 2014.
Indicator Objective Weight (out of 600) Source Number of Articles Scientific Productivity %21 InCites Citation Research Impact %21 InCites Total Documents Scientific Productivity %10 InCites Article Impact Total Research Quality %18 InCites Citation Impact Total Research Quality %15 InCites International Collaboration International Acceptance %15 InCites
Number of articles Number of articles is used as a measure of current scientific productivity which includes articles indexed by Web of Science. This indicator covers articles, reviews and notes. The weight of this indicator in the overall ranking is %21.
Citation
Citation, as an indicator in URAP ranking, is a measure of research impact. It is scored according to the total number of citations received. The weight of this indicator in the overall ranking is %21.
Total documents Total documents is the measure of sustainability and continuity of scientific productivity. The total document count covers all scholarly literature provided by the Web of Science database, including conference papers, reviews, letters, discussions, scripts, and journal articles. The weight of this indicator in the overall ranking is %10.
Article Impact Total (AIT)
Article Impact Total (AIT) is a measure of scientific productivity adjusted by the ratio of institution's Citation Per Publication (CPP) to the world CPP in 23 subject areas. The ratio of the institution's CPP and the world CPP indicates whether the institution is performing above or below the world average in that field. This ratio is multiplied by the number of publications in that field and then summed across the 23 fields, as shown in the following formula:
The weight of this indicator in the overall ranking is %18.
Citation Impact Total (CIT) Citation Impact Total (CIT) is a measure of research impact corrected by the institution's normalized CPP with respect to the world CPP in 23 subject areas. The ratio of the institution's CPP and the world CPP indicates whether the institution is performing above or below the world average in that field. This ratio is multiplied by the number of citations in that field and then summed across the 23 fields, as shown in the following formula:
The weight of this indicator in the overall ranking is %15.
International collaboration
International Collaboration is a measure of global acceptance of the institution. International collaboration data, which is based on the total number of published studies conducted in collaboration with foreign universities, is obtained from InCites. The weight of this indicator in the overall ranking is %15.
Current rankings
Global ranking + University Ranking by Academic Performance—Top 50Institution2021-222020-212019–202018–192017–182016–172015–162014–15 Harvard University11111111 University of Toronto22222222 University College London34356566 Stanford University43445487 University of Oxford55533333 Johns Hopkins University66668644 University of Cambridge77779855 University of Michigan888911101010 University of Washington91091012111111 Tsinghua University1012121825384858 Shanghai Jiao Tong University1118192432395059 Imperial College London1213131116151515 University of Paris-Saclay139949180877069 University of Pennsylvania1415141514131313 Zhejiang University1520203133344246 University of California, Los Angeles1616151313121212 Massachusetts Institute of Technology17111187779 Sorbonne University181410174262625 Columbia University1917161415141414 University of Sydney2024242326272930 University of Copenhagen2119181617161622 Peking University2221212229334448 University of Melbourne2325232630313029 University of Paris2423979587857876 University of California, San Diego2526221918171716 University of California, San Francisco2630312824221918 National University of Singapore2732283027293234 Cornell University2828292523252524 University of British Columbia2929272721212220 Yale University3027262120192021 University of São Paulo3133333836403531 Monash University3237394653576264 University of California, Berkeley3322171210998 University of Queensland3435353940414351 Sun Yat-sen University354860839399113116 Duke University3634343328242423 University of Tokyo3731252019181817 KU Leuven3838374241232338 University of New South Wales3942445260717478 University of Amsterdam4040485163616161 Ohio State University4139383638373332 Huazhong University of Science and Technology4249568194111135155 University of Pittsburgh4343403535323128 Karolinska Institute4450514851536057 Fudan University4554586268749094 University of Chicago4636302922202119 Northwestern University4746454346383737 Utrecht University4845424045443735 Seoul National University4951474944503642 University of Minnesota5044323231282727
Rankings by field https://urapcenter.org/Rankings/2020-2021/fields
Commentary and reception URAP covers considerably more institutions than other major ranking systems. In a section about URAP in “Where Are the Global Rankings Leading Us? An Analysis of Recent Methodological Changes and New Developments” published in the European Journal of Education it is mentioned that ”While it is less well-known than SRG, ARWU, THE, and QS, it is interesting because it published a list of 2000 universities, while the above rankings cover a maximum of 700 universities.” This is also mentioned in the “EUA report on Ranking for 2013 “ published by the European University Association. It indicates that URAP, along with SCImago ranking system, “fill an important gap in the rankings market in that their indicators measure the performance of substantially more universities, up to 2000 in the case of URAP and over 3000 in SCImago, compared to only 400 in THE, 500 in SRC ARWU, NTU ranking and CWTS Leiden, and around 700 in QS.”
URAP is mentioned as one of the four ranking systems that solely measure the academic performance. The other three are Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities, CWTS Leiden Ranking, and SCImago Institutions Rankings. URAP excludes teaching indicators, such as student quality and teaching performance, from global rankings and only covers research-oriented indicators. In the “International Benchmarking in UK higher Education” report of the Higher Education Statistics Agency, URAP is listed among the benchmarking resources for measuring academic. In the same report, URAP is categorized in the “whole university rankings” along with Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE), QS World University Rankings, Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), CHE Excellence Rankings, RatER Global University Ranking of World Universities, Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, 2010 World University Ranking, SIR World Report, CWTS Leiden Ranking, U-Multirank, European Research Ranking, Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities, Human Resources & Labor Review (HRLR), and Professional Classification of Higher Education Institutions.
URAP in Research, Books, and Reports URAP is mentioned and used in several studies based on, or referring to, global rankings. In the “World University Ranking Systems: An Alternative Approach Using Partial Least Squares Path Modeling” article, published in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, Urap is incorporated in the suggested model as one of the nine major worldwide university ranking systems along with ARWU, QS, Times, Webometrics, Taiwan. Leiden, SIR, and CWUR. In the same article, URAP is categorized among the ranking systems that are based solely on publication performance. The other ranking systems in the same category are Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities, CWTS Leiden Ranking, and SCImago Institutions Rankings.
The following is a list of some of the books, peer-reviewed articles, and conference proceedings that have covered URAP or have incorporated it in their models or comparisons.
Where Are the Global Rankings Leading Us? An Analysis of Recent Methodological Changes and New Developments, European Journal of Education World university ranking systems: an alternative approach using partial least squares path modelling, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management Sustainable Development and Quality Assurance in Higher Education: Transformation of Learning and Society Determinants of University Choice: A Study on Economics Departments in Turkey, Journal of Higher Education. Collecting University Rankings for Comparison Using Web Extraction and Entity Linking Techniques, Information and Communication Technologies in Education, Research, and Industrial Applications. URAP-TR: a national ranking for Turkish universities based on academic performance, Scientometrics. Global University Rankings and Their Impact, EUA Report in Rankings 2013, European University Association. Contributions of Turkish academicians supervising PhD dissertations and their universities to economics: an evaluation of the 1990–2011 period, Scientometrics. A Type-2 Fuzzy MCDM Method for Ranking Private Universities in İstanbul, Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering, 2014. Adoption of Web 2.0 in academic libraries of top African universities, The Electronic Library. Examining Job Description to Develop Job Performance Indicators for Higher Education Institution Based on MBNQA Education Criteria, Journal of Education & Vocational Research. Software Quality in Academic Curriculum: A Case Study in Turkey, 12th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (ICCSA). University Ranking Lists:A directory., 2013 Report, Division of Analysis and Evaluation, University of Gothenburg. The "ASERF E News Bulletin on Education" published by Apeejay Stya Education Research Foundation compares the ranking results of THE with other ranking systems, including URAP and QS, for the top 10 universities in some countries.