https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/greece
US News & World Report Media Company has recently published the results of its Best Global Universities Rankings for 2022-23. Best Global Universities is in the top 7 of rankings internationally. In this 9th consecutive annual edition of the US News Best Global Universities Rankings, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens ranked 250th out of the 2,000 Universities included in the table. NKUA has climbed 10 places from last year to the highest place ever achieved by a Greek Higher Educational Institution in all 9 editions of the US News Best Global Universities Rankings. At the same time, NKUA ranked 1st among the 10 Greek Universities included in the table (see Table 1). In addition, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens ranked 53rd in the world for Cardiac and Cardiovascular Systems while, among the 608 European Universities in the overall table, NKUA ranked 104th.
The first step in producing these rankings was to create a pool of 2,011 Universities from which to rank the top 2,000. Clarivate provided data for the rankings. It is noteworthy that the final table encompassed Institutions from 95 different countries.
To create the pool, US News first included the top 250 Universities in the results of Clarivate’s global reputation survey. Next, US News added the Institutions with the most papers published in the last 5 years, as long as those were cited or reproduced by the top 200 Universities of the above reputation survey. Papers were limited to the ones published between 2016 and 2020. Only Institutions that met the minimum threshold of at least 1,250 papers (articles, chapters in collective volumes, etc.) published from 2016 to 2020 were rated.
Table 1: Rank and performance of the 10 Greek Universities included in the table of the 2,000 best Universities in the world according to the US News Best Global Universities Rankings 2022-23
Institution name | World rank 2022-23 | Country rank 2022-23 | Global score |
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens | 250 | 1 | 60,6 |
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki | 363 | 2 | 55,6 |
National Technical University of Athens | 441 | 3 | 53,4 |
University of Crete | 605 | 4 | 48,2 |
University of Ioannina | 693 | 5 | 45,9 |
University of Patras | 869 | 6 | 41,8 |
University of Thessaly | 964 | 7 | 39,6 |
University of the Aegean | 1022 | 8 | 38,3 |
Agricultural University of Athens | 1158 | 9 | 35,1 |
Democritus University of Thrace | 1455 | 10 | 287 |
US News calculated the rankings using the following wide range of indicators and weights:
- Global research reputation (12.5%)
- Regional research reputation (12.5%)
- Publications (10%)
- Books (2.5%)
- Conferences (2.5%)
- Normalized citation impact (10%)
- Total citations (7.5%)
- Number of publications that are among the 10% most cited (12.5%)
- Percentage of total publications that are among the 10% most cited (10%)
- International collaboration – relative to country (5%)
- International collaboration (5%)
- Number of highly cited papers that are among the top 1% most cited in their respective field (5%)
- Percentage of total publications that are among the top 1% most highly cited papers (5%)
Table 2: NKUA’s world rank for the period 2015-2023 according to the US News Best Global Universities Rankings | |
Year | World rank |
2022-2023 | 250/2000 |
2021-2022 | 260/1750 |
2020-2021 | 257/1500 |
2019-2020 | 262/1500 |
2018-2019 | 279/1250 |
2017-2018 | 286/1250 |
2016-2017 | 291/1000 |
2015-2016 | 292/500 |
The Universities’ profile pages on https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings list their overall global scores as well as numerical ranks for each one of the 13 indicators. Table 3 presents NKUA’s performance in the 13 indicators over the last 6 years.
Table 3: NKUA’s performance in the 13 indicators of the US News Best Global Universities Rankings
Indicator | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 |
Global research reputation (12.5%) | 603 | 645 | 635 | 621 | 610 | 708 |
Regional research reputation (12.5%) | 148 | 176 | 201 | 216 | 202 | 232 |
Publications (10%) | 240 | 236 | 223 | 217 | 199 | 183 |
Books (2.5%) | 281 | 337 | 351 | 344 | 377 | 316 |
Conferences (2.5%) | 506 | 490 | 458 | 399 | 416 | 380 |
Normalized citation impact (10%) | 384 | 422 | 421 | 453 | 457 | 458 |
Total citations (7.5%) | 220 | 220 | 212 | 215 | 208 | 196 |
Number of publications that are among the 10% most cited (12.5%) | 240 | 239 | 224 | 215 | 220 | 199 |
Percentage of total publications that are among the 10% most cited (10%) | 582 | 525 | 458 | 435 | 462 | 463 |
International collaboration – relative to country (5%) | 497 | 478 | 436 | 393 | 344 | 352 |
International collaboration (5%) | 294 | 254 | 248 | 225 | 221 | 262 |
Number of highly cited papers that are among the top 1% most cited in their respective field (5%) | 186 | 179 | 163 | 163 | 170 | 167 |
Percentage of total publications that are among the top 1% most highly cited papers (5%) | 235 | 223 | 203 | 205 | 251 | 272 |
This performance demonstrates the increasing recognition of NKUA as a significant research Institution globally. At this point, we should mention that in the latest edition of the Best Global Universities Rankings, NKUA placed high globally in 22 subjects, up from 20 in 2021, 16 in 2020, and 12 in 2019. More specifically, in Cardiac & Cardiovascular Systems, Infectious Diseases, and Gastroenterology & Hepatology, our University entered the top 100 worldwide.
The 22 subjects in which NKUA achieved significant distinctions in the 2022-23 Ranking are as follows:
- Cardiac and Cardiovascular Systems (#53)
- Infectious Diseases (#59)
- Gastroenterology and Hepatology (#93)
- Pharmacology and Toxicology (#108)
- Immunology (#112)
- Public, Environmental, and Occupational Health (#116)
- Oncology (#120)
- Surgery (#122)
- Clinical Medicine (#122)
- Neuroscience and Behaviour (#138)
- Endocrinology and Metabolism (#156)
- Radiology, Nuclear Medicine, and Medical Imaging (#206)
- Cell Biology (#226)
- Physics (#244)
- Molecular Biology and Genetics (#274)
- Geosciences (#285)
- Psychiatry/Psychology (#332)
- Social Sciences and Public Health (#335)
- Biology and Biochemistry (#376)
- Computer Science (#448)
- Engineering (#593)
- Chemistry (#651)
The United States of America and the United Kingdom dominate the top 10 of the Ranking, with 8 and 2 Universities, respectively. Harvard University ranks 1st worldwide, followed by another 2 American Universities, namely MIT and Stanford. In Europe, the highest-ranking Institutions are the University of Oxford (5th place worldwide) and the University of Cambridge (8th place worldwide). The University of Toronto in Canada ranks 18th worldwide. In Australia, the highest-ranking Institution is the University of Melbourne (27th place worldwide), while the Chinese Tsinghua University (23rd place worldwide) is the highest-ranking Institution in all of Asia. Africa is represented by 62 Universities, with the University of Cape Town (125th place worldwide) at the top of the regional table.
In closing, I would like to thank once again all members of our academic community; every day and under difficult circumstances, they do their best to maintain the high quality of teaching and research at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. This present distinction, like all the others achieved and announced in the past, is rightfully theirs. We pledge to continue our collaborative efforts to promote our University’s teaching, research, and social work on an international scale.
Thanos Dimopoulos
Rector of NKUA