The URAP ranking system, ranks the top 2000 Higher Education Institutions globally on academic performance and excellence. The ranking is based on six academic performance indicators namely; (1) the Number of Articles, measuring current productivity; (2) Citation, measuring research impact; (3) Total Document, measuring the sustainability of scientific production by quantifying all scholarly literature including conference papers, reviews, letters and discussions; (4) Journal Impact Total, measuring scientific impact which is derived by aggregating the impact factors of journals in which a university published articles; (5) Journal Citation Impact Total, measuring the received citation quality which is based on the impact factors of journals where the citing articles are published; and (6) International Collaboration that measures the global acceptance of a university.
UJ has progressively climbed the URAP ranking since 2010 when it was ranked 1183 in comparison to its current global ranking of 788. This constitutes an impressive climb of 395 places in just four years. In the last year alone UJ jumped 250 places globally. Remarkably, eight-year-old UJ is positioned 9th in Africa and has moved two spaces in 2013 to the firm standing of 6th in South Africa. This is imposing for such a young institution and it places UJ ahead of much older, research intensive universities locally and internationally.
UJ increased it points in the criteria for Journal Impact Total and Journal Citation Impact Total with 12.88 and 11.02 points in 2013 respectively. This is testament to the effectiveness of the UJ strategy to increase the quality, citation and impact of its publications.
Says Professor Ihron Rensburg, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of UJ, “Our URAP ranking of 9th in Africa, coming shortly after our QS ranking in September which put us in the top 4% of global universities, are good indicators that the strategic decisions and choices we have made in favour of global excellence are coming to fruition. UJ is poised to become the Pan-African epicenter for global intellectual reflection and scholarship.”
Earlier this year UJ was also the first and only African university to be accepted into Universitas 21, a consortium of top research-intensive universities in the world. Its membership of this prestigious consortium as well as its QS and URAP rankings are an important endorsement of UJ’s growing international stature and excellence.
