RANKING. Medical research at the University of Gothenburg ranks second in Sweden and 50th in the world in the Shanghai Ranking of the most prestigious universities.
The Shanghai Ranking is a subject-based ranking consisting of five broad subject rankings, each listing 200 universities. The list has been designed to identify the top universities in the world, with a focus on the natural sciences, medicine, and technical fields.
In 2016 the University of Gothenburg placed 50th in the world in medicine and 76-100 in the life sciences. This year’s ranking in medicine is a small decline, since for the past two years, the university has ranked 45th. Within the life sciences, however, the university’s ranking has improved this year from having been in the 101–150 group. The change in life science is mainly due to a change in the Shanghai Ranking’s method that now counts Professor Kaj Blennow as a highly-cited researcher.
In his analysis, Magnus MacHale-Gunnarsson concludes that a single major scientific prize or a single highly-cited researcher can produce large effects for placement in the rankings because they are given so much importance when the list is compiled. This effect is even more marked in the subject rankings, where there are fewer prizes and even fewer highly-cited researchers.
Read more about the Shanghai Ranking here: http://www.shanghairanking.com/
