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The 2015 edition of the CWTS Leiden Ranking is out, and so is its last year’s number one, the Rockefeller University (see ACA Newsletter Education Europe – The coronation of a relatively small university 2014 seemed like a good omen that smaller institutions might have their place among the usual suspects in traditional rankings, CWTS Leiden being one of them. However, this seems to have been a one-year wonder, for the old order has been restored this year with MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley and Princeton at the top. What ever happened to Rockefeller University, which is not to be found at all in this year’s rankings, remains a mystery.
Last year’s second-placed MIT tops the 2015 list, although the institution has fallen in the proportion of publications among the top 10% in the field. This year, this figure for MIT is lower than in 2014 (24.8% compared to 25.2%).
A big leap, however, can be noticed for the Israeli Weizmann Institute of Science, last year’s number 22 and this year’s number 10, which makes it the only non-US university in the top 10 clique. One place below it, just like last year, is the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which went up from the 23rd to the 11th place. Other non-US high-scoring institutions are the all-time classics from the UK and Switzerland: the Oxbridge couple, and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and ETH Zurich. Thus the number of non-US universities among the top 25 again remains at 6.
Overall, there are 285 representatives from Europe this year, with the largest contribution, in absolute terms, from Germany (47), Italy (33) and France (23). After the US, China is again the country with most institutions on the Leiden list and seven more than last year (90).