As globalization brings rapid change in all aspects of research and development, international competition and collaboration have become high-priority items on the agenda of most universities around the world. In this atmosphere of competition and collaboration, the fact of ranking universities in terms of their performance has become significantly important. All universities need to know where they stand among other universities, so that they can properly evaluate their current academic performance and also develop strategic plans to strengthen their progress.

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In an effort to address this need, several ranking systems have been proposed since 2003, including ARWU-Jiao Tong (China), Leiden (The Netherlands), TIMES (United Kingdom), and Webometrics (Spain), and rank universities worldwide based on various criteria. The use of bibliometric data obtained from open-access and credible information resources such as ISI (Information Sciences Institute) and Google Scholar has contributed to the objectivity of these ranking systems. Nevertheless, most ranking systems cover up to 500 of the top universities around the world, mostly representing institutions located in developed countries.

This report introduces some of the most famous ranking systems worldwide and elaborates on their indicators moreover.The ranking systems studied in this report are the following:

• THE
• QS
• ARWU (Shanghai)
• SIR (Scimago)
• URAP
• ISC
• Webometrics
• CWTS Leiden
• NTU
• 4ICU
• CWUR

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