The University of Western Australia
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THE Ranking Methodology

A focus on research of an international quality and the fostering of an outstanding research culture have positioned UWA as one of the best universities in Australia and in the top 150 in the world.

Further information

About the Times Higher Education Ranking (THE)

The THE Ranking was introduced in 2005. Until 2009, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) ran the rankings for the THE. The 2010 THE ranking had a new set of criteria and relied on information gathered from Thomson Reuters, as well as survey data and institutional statistics. The 2015 THE ranking moved from using Thomson Reuters to Scopus for the provision of data.
Key 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
THE - - - - - - 189 190 168 157 109 125 111
Key 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
THE - - - - - - 189 190 168 157 109 125 111

Performance Indicators

Indicator Percentage
Teaching - the learning environment 30%
Citations - research influence 30%
Research - volume, income and reputation 30%
International Outlook - staff, students and research 7.5%
Industry income - innovation 2.5%

There has been some tweaking of the indictors since the introduction of the ranking in 2010 including an indictor for the level of international collaboration (judged using publication data in the WOS).

The THE ranking utilises Z scores for all data sets except for the results of the academic reputation survey.

Each data point is given a score based on its distance from the mean average of the entire data set, where the scale is the standard deviation of the data set.

The Z-score is then turned into a "cumulative probability score" to arrive at the final totals.

For the results of the reputation survey, the data are highly skewed in favour of a small number of institutions at the top of the rankings. In the 2012-13 ranking, THE introduced an exponential component to increase differentiation between institutions lower down the scale.

In 2015, THE removed 649 papers with more than 1,000 authors from the citations indicator, which prevents individual very highly cited papers from skewing the citation score criteria of small institutions.

Also in 2015, THE blended equal measures of a country-adjusted and non-country-adjusted raw measure of citations scores. THE argue that this presents a 'more rigorous approach to international comparison of research publications'.

The move from Thomson Reuters to Scopus bibliometric assisted in UWA's significant rise in the 2015 ranking. At the time of the ranking Scopus covered significantly more Australian journals than Thomson Reuters, thereby increasing UWA’s score for papers per faculty member and citation scores.

Subject Rankings

THE also conducts rankings by subject areas, with UWA ranked in the top 100 in three key fields:

Subject UWA 2017 Rank
Life Sciences 67
Social Sciences 77
Clinical, Pre-clinical & Health 86
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Last updated:
Thursday, 12 October, 2017 1:42 PM

https://www.research.uwa.edu.au/2631228