Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) sees Physics institutes at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz among 75 best in the world
12.11.2013
In the 2013 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) did well again and was ranked among the 200 best universities in the world and was even among the top 100 for Natural Sciences. The research field of physics at Mainz University did even very well and was among the 75 universities with the best research. The world leader in physics is still the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA followed by Stanford University and the University of California, Berkley, USA. Mainz University has been ranked between 9 and 14 in national rankings. The Technical University Munich is ranked first as it was in 2012, followed by Heidelberg University and Ludwig Maximilian University Munich.
Jiao Tong University Shanghai started to publish the annual Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) in 2003; the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy assumed publication of the ARWU from 2009. As the first global ranking system, it has attracted considerable worldwide attention. The ranking compares the excellence in research of more than 1,000 leading universities around the world. Main criteria used to evaluate research performance are publication citation rates and numbers of Nobel Prize and Fields Medal holders. Originally conceived as a ranking for entire universities, rankings for five broad subject fields such as the Natural Sciences were introduced in 2007, while in 2009, rankings for five individual subjects were introduced, i.e., Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science, and Economics/Business.
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz also did very well in the Leiden Ranking and was once again among the twenty best universities in Germany in all categories. JGU did particularly well in the area of publication collaboration and was ranked ninth in the category "Inter-Institutional Collaboration with Organizations," fifth in the category "Inter-Institutional Collaboration with Countries," and was even ranked first in the category "Geographic Distance of Collaborations."