New Interdisciplinary Ranking by Times Higher Education: Unipd at 56th Place Worldwide
22.11.2024
The international ranking agency Times Higher Education (THE) has published the first edition of the Interdisciplinary Science Rankings 2025 (ISR): in this inaugural edition, the University of Padua is ranked 56th in the world and second among the large universities at the national level.
The new ranking has emerged after several years of preliminary work in close collaboration between THE and the Schmidt Science Institute. The meeting between THE and Schmidt Science has led to the creation of the first ranking that evaluates the contributions of global universities to scientific progress in terms of interdisciplinarity, using some of the data already utilised by the ranking agency to compile the THE World University Ranking.
For this edition, only 749 global universities were selected, 22 of which are Italian. Only sciences were considered: Computer Science, Engineering, Life Science, Physical Sciences. An expansion of the disciplines analysed is expected from the next edition.
The methodology of the Interdisciplinary Science Rankings 2025 consists of eleven indicators, summarised into three main components (pillars), each representing a phase of the research project lifecycle: Input, accounting for 19% of the overall result, considers information on research funding; with the Process pillar (weight 16%) evaluating how research is conducted within universities; the Output asset (weight 65%) includes four bibliometric metrics (e.g., number and citations of high-level interdisciplinary publications) and a reputational metric.
«International rankings are capable of identifying global trends in scientific challenges, producing new rankings that focus on specific themes - comments Mara Thiene, Unipd's delegate for Joint Degrees and International Rankings - despite the limitations associated with comparative evaluations between very different academic systems. This new ranking on interdisciplinarity recognises and rewards an aspect that our University has invested in and will continue to invest in, in terms of research, infrastructure, and teaching.»
