Asia University Rankings 2023: work that’s worth noting

Browse the full Asia University Rankings 2023 results

Asia is playing an increasingly important role in spreading new knowledge and ideas across the world.

Over the past five years, countries in the region have significantly improved their average citation score, which measures research influence by capturing the average number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars ­globally.

As the map below shows, citation scores (based on countries with at least five universities continuously ranked since 2019) on the continent are growing at a faster pace than the rest of the world.

Three Asian countries currently have a higher score than the world average: Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and China. Other nations, such as Pakistan, still rank below the world average but have seen a boost over recent years. The only country to have recorded a dip is Japan.

When looking at the top six ­subjects for citation scores in certain countries, we can see that the region tends towards science and social science subjects as opposed to arts and humanities. The business and economics research coming out of the region is particularly highly cited, as is work on computer science and engineering.

tiya.alexander@timeshighereducation.com