Ranking universities by interdisciplinary publications

One of the indicators we regard as very innovative in U-Multirank – the largest university ranking in the world -  is the interdisciplinarity indicator. Its inclusion as one of the research indicators in these world raknings is driven by our aim to show an additional characteristic of an institution’s research. When people want to assess the research performance of a university they often look at bibliometric indicators such as citation rates, or the number of a university’s research publications that belong to the top 10% most frequently cited publications worldwide. While these are important indicators, there is more to research performance than just these. Important scientific discoveries these days often take place at the intersection of different disciplines. And many of today’s societal challenges are wicked problems that are multidisciplinary in character, requiring the use of methods and insights from several established disciplines. Studying global warming for example involves ecological systems, human behaviour, energy science, political science and more. More...