US News ranks 4 Rice academic subjects among top 100 globally

U.S. News ranks 4 Rice academic subjects among top 100 globally

Four academic subjects at Rice University were ranked among the top 100 worldwide in the 2018 edition of U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Global Universities.”

Physics is No. 26, materials science is No. 29, chemistry is tied for No. 48 and mathematics is No. 89.

Enhancing research achievement and reputation is one of the goals of Rice’s Vision for the Second Century, part two. In addition to the four subjects ranked among the top 100, Rice was identified as a global leader in geosciences (tied for No. 147), engineering (tied for No. 153), arts and humanities (tied for No. 163) and biology and biochemistry (tied for No. 258).

These subject-specific rankings were based on academic research performance in those areas, as measured by such bibliometric data as papers published between 2011 and 2015 and citations up through May 30 this year. U.S. News noted that these are not rankings of majors or departments.

Among the factors that influenced how the ranking variables were weighted were the percentage of a school’s total papers in a subject area that had international co-authors, the total number of highly cited papers in the top 1 percent of their respective subject fields and the percentage of a university’s total papers in that subject that are among the top 1 percent of most-cited papers in that discipline.

Clarivate Analytics InCites provided the data and metrics used in these U.S. News rankings, and the bibliometric indicators were based on the Web of Science, a web-based research platform that covers more than 18,000 of the most influential and authoritative scholarly journals around the globe.

To view the 22 subject fields that were ranked, visit https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities.