The University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP [http://www.urapcenter.org]) has just announced the rankings of the world's top universities. URAP is a ranking organization established in 2010 by the Middle East Technical University, a prestigious Turkish public university which is ranked among 601-800 by the Times Higher Education (THE), United Kingdom. The unit that was responsible for this data analysis and ranking is the Information Measurement Department of this university and a Department of Specialization in Data Science.
The data for the ranking is the Web of Science (ISI, Clarivate) – the world's leading scientific database. URAP analyzes various measures of academic achievement of universities, and focuses on 6 main criteria:
- Number of research papers published in journals with high impact index in the most recent year: accounting for 21% of total points;
- Number of citations of publications in journals with high impact index in last 5 years: accounting for 21% of total points;
- Total number of research papers published internationally on ISI in the last 5 years: accounting for 10% of total points;
- Density of publications in 23 majors according to the Web of Science compared to the world average: accounting for 18% of the total points;
- Documents published in 23 majors according to the Web of Science and cited compared to the world average: 15% of the total points;
- International cooperation in scientific research: accounting for 15% of total points.
Using the world's most prestigious scientific database (ISI) and an objective assessment by a scientific organization makes URAP one of the most trusted university rankings.
In 2018-2019, there were 2,500 top universities in the world included in this ranking with Harvard University (USA), followed by the University of Toronto (Canada), Oxford University (UK) and Stanford University (USA) at the very top.
Vietnam has seven universities in this ranking system. Ton Duc Thang University (TDTU) ranked second in Vietnam after VNU Hanoi. All seven universities are listed in the following table:
TDTU is a public university with financial autonomy in the past 21 years and compared to the seven public universities listed in the table above, TDTU is also the first university in Vietnam to be rated 4 out of 5 stars by QS Stars, UK; and has been accredited by the European university accreditation standards (HCERES) in 2018.
According to URAP, TDTU is ranked 1,422 in the world, above prestigious American universities such as the University of New Orleans or Cleveland State University; or the University of the Philippines in Manila.
Being in the prestigious university rankings is a great honor for Vietnamese universities. It is even more honorable because URAP uses a set of scientific and objective criteria, not only the number of scientific publications but also their quality. This ranking is not concerned about "getting confidential ballots" or for whom are the votes, or how to choose a specialist to get votes. There are still some un-explainable questions at other world ranking organizations, such as whether the selected experts are knowledgeable and behaving objectively about the university they are invited to evaluate.
That is why academics believe that URAP could soon replace the positions of the top three ranking organizations in the world today if the three organizations do not innovate their ranking methods.
