World University Rankings powered by Scopus data

The international higher education system is growing, creating fiercer competition for top talent and funding. Deciding on where to study, teach, or how to refine research strategies have become more complex — and data-driven institution rankings have become a key resource.

Rankings are particularly helpful in revealing institutions’ relative strengths, providing crucial information for would-be students, professionals navigating their academic careers, policymakers planning funding programs, and research and education leaders who make decisions on behalf of institutions in areas like teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international visibility.

But for rankings to be as helpful to the academic community as possible (and this is an area wherein we’re proud to say Scopus is uniquely strong), good data and a comprehensive global view is an absolute must.

Elsevier and Times Higher Education’s successful collaboration continues

Times Higher Education (THE) previously covered 400 institutions in its esteemed World University Rankings in 2014 – today, they cover 1,100. What has helped them grow the breadth of insights they offer is a partnership with Elsevier, as we help fuel their work in analyzing research activity at each institution with Scopus bibliometric data. Recently, this partnership extended into a multi-year agreement.

Watch this short RELX Group video to hear Times Higher Education’s Trevor Barratt and Elsevier’s M’hamed el Aisati discuss the benefits of working together:

Scopus also supports other notable ranking systems with its data, including the Financial Times Global MBA Rankings, QS World University Rankings, Maclean’s University Rankings Canada, and national university rankings in China. As the largest abstract and citation database of research in the world, Scopus is a natural ally to organizations that need to draw from a breadth of trusted and accurate data. For one, it offers better coverage across established and emerging markets, along with broad and deep coverage across disciplines. Depending on the region, Scopus covers anywhere from 50-230% more publication titles across thousands of publishers. It also offers reliability and transparency for those who leverage its data because it implements systematic author and affiliation disambiguation across all disciplines.

We’re excited about this extended agreement between Elsevier and THE because it affirms the importance of continuing to enable better informed decisions across stakeholders in the academic community. Besides utilizing Scopus data, THE will continue using the Elsevier analytics tool SciVal, and Elsevier will continue conducting a global academic reputation survey each year for THE.

Read the Elsevier Connect article to find out more about THE’s methodology and how Scopus data enriches their work.