1. Why are we doing the ranking?

Our original purpose of doing the ranking was to find out the gap between Chinese universities and world-class universities, particularly in terms of academic or research performance. It has been done for our academic interests without any outside support.

Upon the request of colleagues and friends from various countries, we published the ranking on our website and update it annually. We hope our Academic Ranking of World Universities will help you to compare and identify universities worldwide by their academic or research performance.

2. How many universities have we ranked?

We have scanned every university that has any Nobel Laureates, Fields Medals, Highly Cited Researchers, or papers published in Nature or Science. In addition, we scanned major universities of every country with significant amount of articles indexed in major citation indices. In total, we have scanned more than two thousand universities.

Although we publish only the top 500 universities, we have actually ranked about 1,200 universities. We regret that we will not provide you with information on the ranking of universities beyond the top 500.

3. Is our academic ranking objective?

The quality of universities cannot be precisely measured by mere numbers. Therefore, any ranking is controversial and no ranking is absolutely objective. People should be cautious about any ranking including our Academic Ranking of World Universities.

It would be impossible to have a comprehensive ranking of universities worldwide, because of the huge differences of universities in the large variety of countries and the technical difficulties in obtaining internationally comparable data. Our ranking is using carefully selected indicators and internationally comparable third-party data that everyone could check.

4. Are there any problems with the ranking?

There are many methodological and technical problems. Methodological problems include: the proportion of indicators on teaching and services, the weight of per capita performance, the type of institutions (comprehensive or specialized), the language bias in publications, the selection of awards and the experience of award winners. Technical problems include: the definition of institutions, the attribution of publications and awards, and the history of institutions.

For more detailed discussions, please read our paper "Academic ranking of world universities - methodologies and problems", which is a paper presented at the meeting of International Ranking Expert Group and subsequently published in Vol. 30, No 2., 2005 of "Higher Education in Europe".

5. What are the major changes in 2008?

No changes were made in ranking methodology in 2008.

In order to avoid potential misinterpretation, we revised the Code of two indicators: the 'SCI' was changed to 'PUB', and 'Size' was changed to 'PCP', but the definitions of these two indicators were unchanged.

6. What are we planning to do in 2009?

We will listen to your opinions carefully and update our ranking in August 2009 again. Your comments and suggestions will be very much appreciated!