April 30, 2014

UC Santa Barbara Places Among Top 10 on Leiden Ranking of 750 Major Universities in the World

Ranking measure scientific impact and involvement in scientific collaboration in the sciences and social sciences

For the second year in a row, UC Santa Barbara has placed among the top 10 in Leiden University’s annual rankings of the top 750 major universities in the world in terms of impact in the field of the sciences. UC Santa Barbara took the number 8 spot.

The ranking is compiled by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands and is based on data from the Web of Science bibliographic database produced by Thomson Reuters. It includes the Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index.

The Leiden Ranking is a compilation of the top 750 universities worldwide with the largest publication output in the Web of Science database. Impact is determined by several indicators, including the average number of citations of the publications of a university, and the proportion of publications that belong in the top 10 percent most frequently cited. Based on 2009 to 2012 numbers in the Web of Science database, UC Santa Barbara's scientific publications — which include papers in the areas of life, biomedical, mathematics, engineering, computer, natural, and social sciences and humanities — are cited an average of 11.11 times, and 21.2 percent of its scientific publications belong in the top 10 percent of most frequently cited publications.

Compared with the 2013 edition of the Leiden Ranking, the current edition the rankings have been broken down into seven fields of science rather than five. These fields have been defined at the level of individual publications rather than at the journal level.

According to the Centre for Science and Technology Studies, the Leiden Ranking “offers more advanced indicators of scientific impact and collaboration and uses a more transparent methodology.” The ranking does not use data from reputational surveys, or data provided by the universities themselves, and employs bibliometric methods — quantitative analyses of patterns of publication — to analyze the impact of and collaboration by the top 750 universities in the field of the sciences. The Centre is a leading provider of science and technology indicators, and of performance and benchmark studies of scientific groups and institutes.

The complete 2014 Leiden Ranking can be found at http://www.leidenranking.com/ranking.

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About UC Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara is a leading research institution that also provides a comprehensive liberal arts learning experience. Our academic community of faculty, students, and staff is characterized by a culture of interdisciplinary collaboration that is responsive to the needs of our multicultural and global society. All of this takes place within a living and learning environment like no other, as we draw inspiration from the beauty and resources of our extraordinary location at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.