Alumni indicates the total number of the alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics and Fields Medals in mathematics. Alumni are defined as those who obtain bachelor, Master's or doctoral degrees from the institution. Different weights are set according to the periods of obtaining degrees. The weight is 100% for alumni obtaining degrees in 1991-2000, 80% for alumni obtaining degrees in 1981-1990, 60% for alumni obtaining degrees in 1971-1980, 40% for alumni obtaining degrees in 1961-1970, and finally 20% for alumni obtaining degrees in 1951-1960. If a person obtains more than one degrees from an institution, the institution is considered once only. Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine are used in both LIFE and MED ranking.

Award indicates the total number of the staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics and Fields Medals in mathematics. Staff is defined as those who work at an institution at the time of winning the prize. Different weights are set according to the periods of winning the prizes. The weight is 100% for winners in 2001-2006, 80% for winners in 1991-2000, 60% for winners in 1981-1990, 40% for winners in 1971-1980, and finally 20% for winners in 1961-1970. If a winner is affiliated with more than one institution, each institution is assigned the reciprocal of the number of institutions. For Nobel Prizes, if a prize is shared by more than one person, weights are set for winners according to their proportion of the prize. Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine are used in both LIFE and MED ranking.

HiCi indicates the number of highly cited researchers in twenty subject categories defined and provided by isihighlycited.com. These highly cited researchers are assigned to five broad subject fields. If a researcher is listed in more than one subject category, his/her weight for each category is the reciprocal of the number of categories listed. Specifically, researchers who are listed in Social Science, General Category are checked one by one, and they are reclassified into three groups according to their affiliation colleges/departments. People worked at health-related units such as medical school, school of public health and school of nursing are grouped for MED ranking, people affiliated to Psychology/Psychiatry departments are not considered for the ranking, other individuals in this category are totaled for SOC ranking.

PUB indicates the total number of articles indexed by Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation Index in 2005. Only publications of article type are considered. Each article published by an institution is assigned into one of the six broad subject fields according to journals the article was published in (Classification of Journal Categories), including above-mentioned five broad subject fields and Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Sciences. If an article is published in a multi-assigned journal (which is assigned to more than one ISI category), it is divided into related groups.

TOP indicates the percentage of articles published in the top 20% journals of each broad subject field. Top 20% journals are defined as their impact factors in the top 20% of each ISI category according to Journal Citation Report, 2005. Articles in the top journals of each ISI category are then aggregated into the six broad subject fields and the TOP is calculated as the number of articles in the top 20% journals of a particular broad subject field to that in all journals of the field. A threshold was set for the minimum number of top articles in each broad subject field. The threshold was defined as 10% of the average of top articles by the top three institutions in each broad subject field. If the threshold of a particular field is less than 50, then 50 is used. If the number of top articles of an institution does not meet the minimum threshold, the TOP indicator is not calculated for the institution and its weight is relocated to other indicators. Only publications of article type are considered.

Fund indicates the total engineering-related research expenditures in 2004. This indicator is only used for ENG ranking. If the data for all institutions of a country cannot be obtained, the Fund indicator will not be considered for the institutions and its weight will be relocated to other indicators. For this ranking, the amounts of engineering-related research expenditures are obtained only for institutions in USA and some institutions in Canada.    (BACK)