The University of Toronto (UofT) has been ranked as the fourth-best university globally for the output and impact of its scientific papers, placing 33 spots ahead of the next highest-ranked Canadian university. This ranking, conducted by National Taiwan University (NTU), has served as a standard for assessing research performance across various fields, including agriculture, engineering, medicine, as well as the life, natural, and social sciences since its inception in 2007.
Since 2022, data from NTU indicates that universities in China have significantly increased their article citations and output, emerging as strong competitors in global scientific research. University College London in the U.K. secured the top position, followed by Harvard and Stanford from the United States. The University of Toronto ranked fourth with a score of 60.5 out of 100, surpassing both the University of Oxford and Johns Hopkins University.
The University of Toronto's ranking was 33 positions higher than the next best Canadian research institution, the University of British Columbia (UBC), which scored 46.9 and placed 37th globally. McGill University followed closely, ranking 57th. The NTU ranking evaluates several indicators, including research excellence, which is assessed through contributions to high-impact journals and papers in the top one percent of the most cited works over the past decade; research impact, measured by citation counts from the past two years and the decade; and research productivity, determined by the number of papers published during the same periods.
“Many other universities set themselves apart in only a few areas of research. U of T is a global leader in so many areas, including medicine, engineering, artificial intelligence, social sciences, business, and more”, Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives, told The Hub in an email. “This allows for a level of multidisciplinary research that few others can match, bringing together experts here that would rarely work together elsewhere”.
In medical research, the school ranked second (the same spot as last year) and third (up three spots) in social sciences. Last year, it ranked fifth worldwide. In 2021, it reached its record of third overall. In 2019, NTU scores tanked, presumably due to lack of publication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, prominent U.K. and U.S. universities continued to see a decline namely Stanford, Oxford, Johns Hopkins, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Chinese universities have shown significant improvement in their rankings, with Zhejiang University and Tsinghua University in Beijing positioned seventh and eighth among the top 10 universities for scientific research worldwide by 2024. In 2022, these universities were ranked 46th and 36th globally. Notably, in 2022, China surpassed the United States in contributions to articles published in the Nature Index, which consists of prestigious natural science journals, as reported by Nature. The year prior, China had already taken the lead globally in the number of papers published in the fields of physical sciences and chemistry.
According to the NTU rankings, this year, Zhejiang University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked eighth and 12th overall, trailing only the University of Toronto and Harvard in their score of articles published over the last 11 years. However, Chinese institutions have recently been confronted with serious allegations of scientific fraud. It appears that quantity, rather than quality, has driven promotions and funding for Chinese researchers, leading to the mass production of questionable papers, as reported by The Economist last February. This may be contributing to their competitive article production scores.
