CWTS Leiden Ranking 2024 | Must-know for Students

The CWTS Leiden Ranking is published yearly by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (Centrum voor Wetenschap en Technologische Studies in Dutch) at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Since the first edition in 2007, their intended audience has not been students trying to choose a university, instead it is geared towards “policy makers, research managers, researchers, journalists, and anyone else with an interest in the scientific performance of universities”.

The motto of the CWTS Leiden Ranking is “meaningful metrics” and regardless of whether or not you think that their criteria is pertinent, there is no denying the extensive effort that went into formulating this ranking in a way that the data provided can be easily understood by those who consult it.

The Leiden ranking is a bit of a DIY in that they don’t actually publish one overall ranking. Instead, you can choose what you consider to be important and view the ranking according to one of their four factors: scientific impact; collaboration; open access; or gender diversity. This means that they make no claims as to which institution is best overall, only which is best in those particular items; preferring to let the viewer decide what is most important for their purposes. It is interesting to note that a significant part of the funding for the CWTS Leiden Ranking comes from U-Multirank, another university ranking agency based in Germany, whose approach is not entirely dissimilar.

In terms of possible university comparisons, CWTS goes further still in that you can also choose to see the data normalised for five fields:

Key facts about the ranking

  • Publisher: Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, Netherlands, Netherlands
  • Latest ranking publication date: 03 July, 2024
  • Publication frequency: Annual
  • Geographic focus: Global
  • Ranking type: University rankings.
  • Year of first publication: 2007
  • 1506 universities in ranking

Ranking table 2024 CWTS Leiden Ranking

Source: Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, Netherlands - CWTS Leiden Ranking

What is really measured and how - Methodology DeepDive

Because of the nature of the ranking, there is no weight allotted to any of the criteria CWTS Leiden uses. The default when you open their ranking is a list ordered by Scientific Impact in all sciences based on number of publications, not using fractional counting. However, when viewing the ranking according to the scientific impact of institutions for all fields, CWTS Leiden recommends that you tick the Fractional Counting box as they consider that fractional counting provides a fairer comparison between universities which do not necessarily focus on the same fields.

The four factors considered by CWTS are scientific impact, collaboration, open access, and gender diversity. But how do they get a score for each of these factors?

The scientific impact of a university is evaluated according to the number of articles they publish and the number of times their work is cited by others.

The collaboration score is based on the number and percentage of their publications based on work conducted with other institutions or industrial/corporate organisations. For this they take into consideration the geographical distance separating the entities involved and use this as an indicator of the globality or the international quality of the work being done.

The open access score relates to how much of their work (research results/publications) is publically available. And gender diversity is scored according to the percentage of articles published written by women versus those written by men.

Types of Data Collected Directly by the Publisher
-
External databases/data providers used

Web of Science (Clarivate) / Unpaywall

Criteria Classification
  • 75% Academic Performance
  • 25% Other (Gender Diversity)
Which of these common ranking elements are covered and which is the main focus
  • Research publications and citations
  • Academic reputation - survey or other
  • Student Survey
  • Internationalization (% of foreign staff/students/exchange)
  • Employer reputation survey or Salary data
Methodology
https://www.leidenranking.com/information/indicators

Our take - How useful is the ranking for students

Rating
2.0 / 5.0
Popularity
Google results for: CWTS "Leiden Ranking": 70800
PROS
  • people can choose what is of importance to them and view ranking lists according to that criteria
CONS
  • no definitive ranking list
  • not aimed at students
Practical use

As pointed out from the start, this ranking is not meant as a tool for students deciding where to study. That said, if any of the factors used to rank the institutions is of interest to you, then the CWTS Leiden ranking can be too. They do a great job of putting the information together and making it easy to consult. So, all in all, not the most pertinent ranking, but can still be worth checking out.

Criticism

Over ten years ago now, the CWTS Leiden ranking was criticised for the way in which it normalises the results by field. This is addressed however in the possibility to use fractional counting for the scientific criteria. Personally, I am of two minds regarding the lack of an overall score and ranking for each institution. On one hand, I think it’s great that people can pick and choose what’s important for them. On the other hand, it’s likely that most people won’t take the time to read and understand what they are looking at and so they will always consider the default ranking shown when you open the webpage to be a definitive list

Cora Lee Paddock, UniversityGuru: 20 August, 2024