Stellenbosch University’s (SU’s) vision to be Africa’s leading research-intensive university is supported by being counted among the top higher education institutions globally when it comes to research outputs, particularly articles published in accredited international journals.
This has been confirmed by the latest Shanghai Ranking Consultancy’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) released recently. According to the 2023 version, SU has increased the number of academic papers published in two of the most reputable journals in the world Nature and Science. SU improved its score from 5,9 in 2022 to 9,6 in 2023.
Overall, SU continues to find itself among the top 2% of universities in the world and the ARWU ranking places SU in third place in South Africa, sharing this position with the University of Pretoria
The ARWU uses the following six objective indicators to rank more than 2500 universities every year of which the best 1000 are published:
- The number of alumni who win Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals
- The number of staff who win Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals
- The number of highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories
- The number of papers published in Nature and Science
- The number of papers indexed in the Science Citation Index-expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index
- The per capita academic performance of an institution
“In line with our vision to be Africa’s leading research-intensive university, we also want to discern ourselves in higher education globally. Our consistent performance on this particular ranking is testimony of the continuous, high-level contribution of our researchers to the global scientific pool of knowledge,” says Prof Hester Klopper, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Strategy, Global and Corporate Affairs at SU. “The increase in the number of articles in Nature and Science is a further feather in the cap,” she adds.
In March 2023, SU was also among the leading higher education institutions in the world on the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World University Rankings by Subject, while in June it achieved a remarkable feat by making it into the top 300 tertiary institutions on the QS World University Rankings.
Over the last few years, SU has been consistently ranked among the best tertiary institutions in the world on various global university rankings, including the QS World University Rankings, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and the Times Higher Education Emerging Economies University Rankings.
- Photo by Stefan Els (Corporate Communication and Marketing at SU)
