In the recently released Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2022, the University of Turku was placed 401–500th in the global rankings. Among Finnish universities, the University of Turku came in between a shared 3–5th place.
The global Academic Ranking of World Universities, also known as the Shanghai Ranking, has scrutinized over 2,500 universities worldwide this year, out of which, the best 1,000 universities were published. The University of Turku’s ranking has dropped from the previous year, when it was listed in the 301–400th place.
Similar to previous years, ARWU uses a variety of academic or research performance indicators to effectively capture university performance. These indicators include alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, papers published in Nature and Science, papers indexed in major citation indices, and the per capita academic performance of an institution.
A closer look at the data reveals that the strongest indicators for the University of Turku are papers indexed in Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation Index (PUB) and per capita academic performance of an institution (PCP). Both of these metrics scored higher overall than they did the previous year.
However, both the number of publications published in Nature and Science (N&S) as well as the number of highly cited researchers (HiCi) have significantly decreased from the previous year. Furthermore, the University of Turku has not earned any points for its staff or alumni obtaining Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals. The overall performance of the University of Turku this year has been negatively impacted by all of this.
In ARWU 2022, the University of Turku was ranked in a shared position of 3–5th place in Finland. All Finnish universities were listed as follows (global rankings are shown in brackets):
1. University of Helsinki (92nd)
2. Aalto University (301–400th)
3.–5. Tampere University (401–500th)
3.–5. University of Oulu (401–500th)
3.–5. University of Turku (401–500th)
6. University of Eastern Finland (601–700th)
7. University of Jyväskylä (701–800th)
In the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2022 published in July the University of Turku was listed among the best universities in altogether 24 of the 54 subjects.
