Leiden Ranking


The Leiden ranking is a University ranking system developed by the university of Leiden, The Netherlands.

The ranking lists the top 500 universities based on publications on the Web of Science (WoS) website, a scientific publication database run by Thomson Reuters. The Leiden Ranking system looks at publications in multiple languages to avoid an English bias. Publications on arts and humanities are not used in the ranking, because there is no sufficient data available for in the Web of Science databases to rank universities on it.

The ranking is for the 2011-2012 period, but is based on publications on WoS between 2005 and 2009. This probably has to do with the period needed for articles to 'mature' so their impact can be measured through citations.
The top 10 in the Leiden Ranking is made up completely of U.S. based universities, who are apparently the publication grandmasters on Web of Science.

The Leiden Ranking thus gives useful information on universities, but only about scientific publications, and only through one source of publications. It is in that sense similar to the rankings based on web presence of universities only, with the difference that the number of publications probably is a much better indicator of university quality than having a nice website is.

What they look at:
| Impact of publications on WoS | Collaboration indicators on WoS |

What they came up with:
1. MIT
2. Princeton University
3. Harvard University
4. Rice University
5. Stanford University
6. Caltech
7. Univ. California - Santa Barbara
8. Univ. California - Berkeley
9. Carnegie Mellon University
10.University of California - San Francisco

The complete 500 institution-long list can be found on the Leiden Ranking website.

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The Best University aims at bringing you the latest University Rankings and College rankings from all over the world, so you know which university is the best in your country or specialization. The ranking top 10's displayed on this website are taken from web sources, and we always link to the original source. Although we strive to only provide accurate information, we cannot guarantee the accuracy of the content. Always consult multiple sources before deciding which university is the right one for you.