The internationally renowned Shanghai Ranking rates the University of Würzburg among the 300 best research-intensive universities in the world and among the top 19 in Germany.
The Main Building of the University of Würzburg. (Image: Daniel Peter)In mid-August, the latest results of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), better known as the "Shanghai Ranking", were published. Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) once again performed strongly, ranking 201 to 300. The US universities Harvard and Stanford as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are again at the top of this year's ranking.
In a national comparison, JMU stands out among the 10 to 19 best universities in Germany. In the same ranking group, for example, the University of Excellence TU Dresden and one further Bavarian university, FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, are listed. Of the other Bavarian universities, only TU and LMU Munich are higher rated and share the second place. This year, the University of Heidelberg is ranked as the best German university.
JMU's President Paul Pauli is very pleased about the university's good performance: "The Shanghai Ranking shows that we are very well positioned internationally with our research. The basis for this is the excellent research of our scientists, for which I would like to express my sincere thanks!"
More than 2,500 universities compared
To assess the research performance of universities, the Shanghai Ranking uses a total of six parameters. These include the number of alumni and current employees who have been awarded high-ranking prizes, e.g. nobel prizes, the number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, and the number of academics who are cited particularly frequently and listed among the Highly Cited Researchers.
The Ranking, first published in 2003, is one of the oldest and most renowned research rankings in the world. Since 2009, it has been published annually by the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, an independent organisation for university information. The Ranking now compares more than 2,500 universities; the results of the best 1,000 are published.
Excellent results in other rankings
In addition to the ARWU, other rankings also repeatedly show the research strength of the University of Würzburg. In the Times Higher Education World University Ranking (THE) of 2023, for example, JMU is ranked 139th worldwide. This ranking uses a particularly wide range of parameters to evaluate the research performance of universities.
