The University of Johannesburg (UJ) continues to make excellent progress in various world university rankings, with the latest being the 2018 Best Global Universities Rankings release by the US News and World Report on Tuesday, 24 October 2017.

UJ has climbed an incredible 93 places from a global rank of 550 in last year’s 2017 edition to a global rank of 457 in the latest 2018 edition, breaking into the Top 500 in the world.

UJ remains firm at seventh position in Africa and sixth position in South Africa.

The US News and World Report evaluates universities on 13 performance indicators. UJ improved across the board, bettering its global ranking positions in 12 of the indicators and coming in at an impressive global rank of 258 for an additional new 13th indicator – the percentage of total publications with international collaboration – which US News and World Report has added to this year’s methodology to emphasise the value of international collaboration by rewarding those universities that author articles with researchers from different countries.

Notable improvements are in two scientific excellence indicators. The first is the percentage of highly cited papers that are among the top 1 percent most cited, which saw UJ rise 104 places to a global rank of 485. Secondly, the number of highly cited papers that are among the top 1 percent most cited, placed UJ at a global rank of 621 – an increase of 85 places. Furthermore, marked improvements were also seen for bibliometric indicators such as the number of publications that are among the 10 percent most cited; the normalised citation impact; and the global and regional reputation indicator.

These results demonstrate, once again, that UJ is consolidating its well-earned place among top research counterparts.