IOMC Medical Blog

Are you looking for the ranking of world top medical universities? Then have a look here. You can find the list of the top 50 universities in the field of “LIFE SCIENCES AND BIOMEDICINE” according to Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings 2009.

Well, you might also be interested to know how universities are ranked in Times Higher Education (THE) – QS Ranking. Let us explain it to you. The ranking is based on some categories which have a weight. They  include:

• Peer Review Score (40%)
• Employer Review (10%)
• International Faculty Score (5%)
• International Students Score (5%)
• Student to Faculty Ratio Score (20%)
• Citations per Faculty Member Score (20%)

But what do these criteria represent and how are they calculated? Let us explian it to you too:

The academic peer review is the centerpiece of the U.S. News World’s Best Universities rankings and is based on an online survey distributed to academics worldwide. Results are compiled based on three years’ worth of responses totaling 9,386 in 2009. Respondents are not permitted to submit their own institution or to respond more than once (their latest response is counted). Weightings are applied both geographically and by discipline to ensure as fair a representative spread as possible.

Similar to the academic peer review, this indicator is based on a global online survey, this time distributed to employers. Results are again based on three years’ worth of “latest response” data, totaling 3,281 in 2009. Geographical weightings are again applied to ensure fair representation from the different regions of the world.

Faculty-student ratio is used in many ranking systems and evaluations in the world. While it may not be a perfect measure of teaching quality, it is the most globally available and accessible measure of commitment to teaching. The ratio is an indicator to determine whether a given institution has sufficient staff to teach its students.

Citations are a widely used conventional measure of research strength. A citation is a reference to one academic publication in the text of another. The more citations a publication receives, the better it is perceived to be, and the more highly cited papers a university publishes, the stronger it can be considered to be. As a measure, this criterion is somewhat geared toward scientific and technical subjects, which is the reason it doesn’t carry more weight in these rankings. The source used in this evaluation is Scopus, the world’s largest abstract and citation database of research literature. The latest five complete years of data are used. The total citation count is factored against the number of faculty members in order to take into account the size of the institution.

In today’s increasingly global marketplace, the most successful universities have to attract the world’s best students and faculty from countries other than their own. Simple evaluations of the proportion of international students and the proportion of international faculty members serve as two separate indicators of an institution’s international attractiveness.

Recently, Time Higher Education announced that following an agreement with Thomson Reuters, they are going to provide all the data for their annual World University Rankings  from Thomson Reuters, from the year 2010 and beyond. They have decided to end their relationship with QS, who will have no further involvement in Times Higher Education’s annual World University Rankings.

As a result, a new rankings methodology will be introduced over the coming months in consultation with the editorial board of higher education experts and Thomson Reuters. However, they are asking for the views of everyone!

With your help, and with the combined expertise of Times Higher Education and Thomson Reuters, they will publish a revamped and improved Times Higher Education World University Rankings of the top 200 universities, with separate rankings by subject areas, in autumn 2010.

You can tell Times Higher Education what you think about this change amd what you think can make up a modern, 21st century world-class university? How would you measure it? What is good about the old (2004-2009) methodology? How would you improve it?

You can post your views here, and look out for regular updates during the year.