More rankings: WWU Münster fares well in international research rankings

Of course, university rankings are trying to judge quality in terms of quantities, and that is never fully adequate. But the numbers are based on facts, mostly publications, so they do mirror to some extent an aspect of reality, and an important one. Two months ago, the annual “Nature Index” was published in which our university ranked among the global top 100 research institutions, as one of only three German universities: WWU Münster came out on rank 92 (up from 109 in 2018 which had placed WWU on rank 6 of German universities) - or rank 81 (up from 96) if only universities are considered. And this week, the” Shanghai Ranking” placed WWU Münster among the top 10 universities in Germany: rank 8-10 together with the Universities of Cologne and Tübingen, globally these three shared ranks 151-200 with 47 other universities worldwide (in 2018, WWU shared rank 8-14 nationally and 151-200 globally). Nature Index is based on “research articles published in an independently selected group of 82 high-quality (natural) science journals“ only, while Shanghai Ranking takes into account “the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate Analytics, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance of a university”. Both concepts of course have their pros and cons - and the authors are aware of them and, therefore, offer multiple ways to look at the data they collected. One can spend hours doing so, and it is sometimes revealing. And then one should go back to do good and relevant research and publish it well!