Four Greek University Schools and Departments of Physical Education and Sport Science among the top 300 globally

ShanghaiRanking (Academic Ranking of World Universities) released the fifth—special—edition of the Global Ranking of Sport Science Schools and Departments.

This 2022 edition reaffirmed the significant scientific and research work of four Greek University Schools/Departments of Physical Education and Sport Science, ranking them among the top 300 in the world in this subject. More specifically, the Department of Physical Education and Sport Science of the University of Thessaly ranked 1^st nationally and in the bracket 101-150 globally, followed by the corresponding Faculty of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, which ranked in the bracket 151-200 globally and 2^nd nationally. NKUA’s School of Physical Education and Sport Science and the Department of Physical Education and Sport Science of Democritus University of Thrace ranked joint 3^rd nationally and in the bracket 201-300 globally.

Table 1 shows the rank and performance of the above Greek Universities in ShanghaiRanking’s 2022 Global Ranking of Sport Science Schools and Departments.

Table 1: The rank of Greek Universities in ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Sport Science Schools and Departments

Universities	World Rank	Country Rank	PUB Indicator	CIT Indicator	CPP Indicator	TOP Indicator	IC Indicator
University of Thessaly	101-150	1st	13.7	6.1	46.6	10	68.2
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki	151-200	2nd	16.6	6.3	39.9	10.9	50.7
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens	201-300	3rd	14.1	4.9	36.7	10.6	52.3
Democritus University of Thrace	201-300	3rd	4.6	1.8	42.2	3.5	53.2

Source: ARWU website https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/grsssd/2022

The top 300 Universities were ranked by three criteria and five indicators of academic and research performance:

1. The Research Output criterion with an overall weighting of 40% and two indicators: i. the PUB Indicator, i.e., the number of papers indexed in the Web of Science database between 2017 and 2021, which includes the total number of papers of a School/Department (20%), and ii. the CIT Indicator, i.e., the total number of citations received by the same papers of a School/Department (20%).
2. The Research Quality criterion with an overall weighting of 50% and two indicators: i. the Citations Per Paper (CPP) Indicator, i.e., the average number of citations received by a School’s/Department’s paper in other publications (25%), and ii. the TOP Indicator, i.e., the number of papers published in the top 25% of journals (25%).
3. The International Collaboration (IC) criterion with an overall weighting of 10% and one indicator, i.e., the percentage of internationally collaborated papers to all papers.

The bibliometric data is collected from the Web of Science database with a time window of five years.

Among the top 300 Institutions in the 2022 list, fifteen are Sport Science Universities, and 285 are Universities with Sports related Departments. It is worth noting that forty-two Universities have more than one Sports related Department or Unit.

By comparison with the 2020 edition, the Australian Deakin University climbed to first place on the table, while in second place remained the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, followed by the Danish University of Copenhagen. In the first ten places of the ranking, we find a total of seven European Universities, two each from Norway and Denmark and one each from Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Three Australian Universities are among the top ten, and there is no representation from the US above the 27^th place, where we find the American University of Illinois.

Thanos Dimopoulos

Rector of NKUA