The University of Montpellier confirms its scientific reputation in the Leiden 2023 world rankings
The University of Montpellier continues to progress both nationally and internationally according to the CWTS Leiden Ranking, and is approaching the world's Top 50 in Earth Sciences. This ranking provides important information on the scientific performance of over 1,500 major universities worldwide. It gives a clear perspective on the volume and influence of our researchers' scientific output, looking at the number of publications in scientific journals and their citations by other national and international scientists.
The University of Montpellier in the national Top 10...
On a national scale, the University of Montpellier ranks 6th for the total volume of scientific publications and4th for the group of the 10% most cited (the "Top10%"). On the "Top10%" criterion, the University of Montpellier ranks1st outside Paris. It is also the country's1st university in the "Life and Earth Sciences" field, both in terms of total number of publications and "Top10%" criteria.
This remarkable national positioning is also reflected on a European scale: the University of Montpellier is in 9th place for the volume of publications (12th for the "Top10%") in the "Life and Earth Sciences" field, and 59th (54th for the "Top10%") for all scientific fields combined.
... and close to the world's Top 50 in Earth Sciences!
Finally, among the several thousand universities in the world, the University of Montpellier is also well placed: around 200th for all fields combined (225th by volume; 196th for the "Top10%") and close to 50th for "Life and Earth Sciences" (62nd by volume, 51st for the "Top10%"). This last point is quite simply remarkable: approaching the group of the world's top 50 universities in this key field for the future can be considered a real achievement for our scientific community. This is a clear indication of the synergy at work within the strategic agreement between the University of Montpellier and its 15 partners (CNRS, Inrae, Inria, IRD, Inserm, BRGM, CEA, Cirad, Ifremer, ENSCM, Institut Agro, Ciheam, CHU de Montpellier, CHU de Nîmes, ICM).
"Last year, the University of Montpellier confirmed its position in the Shanghai ranking of the world's top 200 universities. Today, the same is true of the Leiden ranking, demonstrating the UM's constant progress in international rankings. All this is due to the collective efforts of the Montpellier site to gain greater recognition for the excellence of our researchers' scientific output. We are resolutely committed to further strengthening the influence of our research on a global scale ," declared Philippe Augé, President of the University of Montpellier.
A multidimensional approach
Created in 2011, the ranking produced by Leiden University's Centre for science and technology studies (CWTS) measures the scientific reputation of institutions and their research collaboration. The 2023 ranking lists over 1,500 institutions in 5 fields: medicine, physics, life and earth sciences, mathematics, humanities and social sciences.
The Leiden ranking is based on scientific publications, in particular articles published in scientific journals, which enable it to select sophisticated bibliometric indicators to generate results and analyze the ranking of universities according to one or more selected indicators. It is also based on publications referenced in the Web of science database produced by Clarivate Analytics.
The Leiden ranking list offers a multidimensional approach to university performance. For each combination of university, major field and time period, the ranking provides values for 50 indicators from 4 main types of information: the number of publications and the degree to which these publications are taken up by other work, the degree of collaboration between different universities, open access to publications and the gender of authors. Each year, the ranking is reproduced for all previous years, with the methodology updated. Compared with other university rankings such as Times Higher Education, QS and Arwu (Shanghai), the Leiden ranking "aims to promote a more responsible approach to university ranking". It provides information exclusively on the research carried out at universities, as represented in particular by the scientific publications and carefully collected data that form the basis and independence of this ranking.