UCT maintains position in world rankings

The University of Cape Town (UCT) has maintained its position in the 201–300 band in the latest ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2020, published on Saturday, 15 August.

The ARWU ranks more than 2 000 universities across six key indicators, publishing the best 1 000.

These indicators measure academic and research performance across individually weighted criteria, such as the number of alumni winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (10%), staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20%), highly cited researchers (20%), papers published in Nature and Science (20%), papers indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and the Social Sciences Citation Index (20%) and the per capita academic performance of an institution (10%).

“UCT achieved Africa’s highest score in the research performance indicators.”

UCT performance against indicators

UCT achieved Africa’s highest score in the research performance indicators – the number of publications in Nature and Science and the total number of publications in the Science Citation Index Expanded and the Social Sciences Citation Index.

Only one UCT researcher is included in the highly cited researchers indicator score, a key factor in UCT’s overall ranking slipping to second place behind the University of the Witwatersrand, which has taken the top position in Africa.

The highly cited researchers list, published each year, identifies researchers who have demonstrated significant influence through the publication of multiple papers on the Web of Science which have been highly cited by their peers during the last decade. As researchers are added to or removed from this list, the highly cited researchers indicator score fluctuates considerably, impacting a university’s position in the ARWU rankings.

A local and global snapshot

Other South African universities in the rankings include Stellenbosch University and the University of Pretoria (401–500), the University of KwaZulu-Natal (501–600), North-West University and the University of Johannesburg (601–700), the University of South Africa (801–900) and Rhodes University (901–1 000).

Further afield, other African universities on the list include five Egyptian universities – Cairo University (401–500), Alexandria University (701–800), Ain Shams University and Mansoura University (801–900) and Zagazig University (901–1 000) – as well as Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa University (801–900) and Tunisia’s Université de Tunis El Manar (901–1 000).

Harvard University continues to top the 2020 list for the 18th consecutive year, followed by Stanford University and the University of Cambridge respectively.