Iran tops Islamic nations in 2021 Academic Ranking of World Universities

The 2021 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has placed Iran above all other Islamic countries with the highest number of academic centers among the world’s best 1,000 universities.

With 11 universities, Iran surpassed Turkey (8 universities), Saudi Arabia and Egypt (6 universities each), Malaysia and Pakistan (5 universities each), and Tunisia, Lebanon, Qatar, Nigeria, and Oman (1 university each) in the ranking, IRIB reported.

The 2021 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was published on August 15 by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy. Since 2003, ARWU has been presenting the world's top universities annually based on transparent methodology and objective third-party data. It has been recognized as the precursor of global university rankings and the most trustworthy one. This year, more than 2,000 institutions were scrutinized, and the best 1,000 universities in the world are published.

Harvard University tops the ranking list for the 19th year. Stanford University and the University of Cambridge remain at the No. 2 and No. 3 seats. Other Top 10 universities are MIT (4th), Berkeley (5th), Princeton (6th), Oxford (7th), Columbia (8th), Caltech (9th), and Chicago (10th).

Among Asian universities, The University of Tokyo (24th) keeps its leading position. Tsinghua University (28th) moves up one position, holding on to the second-best place in Asia.

Iran ranked 43rd among the 100 most vibrant clusters of science and technology (S&T) worldwide for the third consecutive year, according to the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2020 report.

Every year, the Global Innovation Index ranks the innovation performance of more than 130 economies around the world.

The total ranking of Iran was 67 in the GII 2020 report, compared with 61 in 2019.

Iran's share of the world's top scientific articles is 3 percent, Gholam Hossein Rahimi She’erbaf, the deputy science minister, has said.

The country’s share in the whole publications worldwide is 2 percent, he noted, highlighting, for the first three consecutive years, Iran has been ranked first in terms of quantity and quality of articles among Islamic countries.

Iranian articles rank 16 and 15 in Web of Science and Scopus, respectively.

Sourena Sattari, vice president for science and technology has told the Tehran Times that Iran is playing the leading role in the region in the fields of fintech, ICT, stem cell, aerospace, and is unrivaled in artificial intelligence.

Courtesy of Tehran Times