By Ruth A Pagell*
(28 Apr 2026) The previous article asked four questions, none of which were completely answered
- What else is new at THE?
- What changes has CWTS Leiden made?
- Do the Human Freedom rankings affect university rankings?
- What is the number one university in the world?
I thought I was finished with THE but they released a new ranking in conjunction with Statista (Chetty & Friedman) that will be covered at a later date. One focus of this article is the changes to CWTS Leiden. A second focus, related to rankings, is the release of the 2026 Academic Freedom Rankings. The decline of U.S. academia is common to both topics and supports my answer to the final question. I also revisited the rankings recognized by IREG ( Inventory of International Rankings). I checked each ranking to see if there is a consensus on who is really number one and is number one the same for all users. There are also new initiatives using open source data or just asking AI (1) that will be examined at a later date.
CWTS LEIDEN RANKINGS 2025
In preparation for this article, I decided on an in depth examination of the latest CWTS Leiden rankings, never expecting it to be part of the larger U.S/Chinese discussion. Its strength is its focus on bibliometric data. It is in its second year of providing an open access alternative to its traditional ranking. Its focus only on bibliometrics is a weakness for identifying the world’s best university.
CWTS Leiden Rankings examples below illustrate that there are three different number one universities in the 2025 version (2). Publications in Web of Science are the basis for Leiden’s Traditional Ranking (3). There are two open options, one with core publications identified as international scientific journals ranking. The third option includes additional open publications in scientific journals with a national or regional focus. Rankings are based on a universities number of publications, number of publications ranked in the top of their fields, and the percent of publications in the top percent, such as top 10 percent, based on citations. Leiden’s methodology allows researchers to rank by quantity or by quality which is measured by citations. The number of universities in the traditional ranking increased from 1506 in 2024 to 1594 in 2025. Below are three tables with differing results based on the different data sets.
Leiden Traditional -Example 1: Web of Science publications
| 1594 Universities | World Rank by total output | Total Output: Total # of articles | Output: # in top 10% | Rank: Citations: # in top 10%
|
Percent in top 10% | Rank: Percent in top 10% citations |
| Zhejiang | 1 | 40492 | 5228 | 2 | 12.9 | 180 |
| Harvard | 3 | 36163 | 7003 | 1 | 19.4 | 4 |
| MIT | 105 | 9905 | 2216 | 30 | 22.4% | 1 |
Nine of the top 10 based on quantity are Chinese. Eight of the top ten for the number of publications in the top 10 are Chinese. None of the top ten in percent of publication are in the top 10 percent, with five from the U.S, two from the UK, and on each from Israel, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia.
Ruth’s Rankings 59 introduced CWTS Leiden’s Open Edition using OpenAlex data that increased from 1506 universities in the first version to 2773 in the current edition.
Leiden Open – Example 2: Core Publications from Open Alex
| 2773 Universities | World Rank by output | Number of Total Output articles | Number in top 10% | Rank on # in top 10% citations | Percent in
top 10% |
Rank in # in top 10% citations |
| Harvard | 1 | 40475 | 7770 | 1 | ||
| Zhejiang | 2 | 35974 | 5384 | 2 | 15% | 109 |
| Rockefeller | 2014 | 775 | 775 | 223 | 28.8 % | 1 |
Harvard is number one and eight of the top 10 based on quantity for total output and top ten percent are Chinese, and is one from Canada
Leiden Open – Example 3: The 2025 rankings expanded the OpenAlex dataset, including scientific journals with a national or regional focus.
| 2831 Universities | World Rank by output | Total Output | Number in top 10% | Rank on # in top 10% citations | Percent in
top 10% |
Rank |
| Harvard | 1 | 43503 | 14874 | 1 | 34.2 | 54 |
| Zhejiang | 3 | 38954 | 13063 | 2 | 15% | 109 |
| Rockefeller | 2559 | 817 | 433 | 1067 | 53% | 1 |
Harvard is number one and six of the top ten are from China and one each are from, Viet Nam, India, and the U.K. Adding the non-core publications is a step toward including more under-represented countries. The most additional publications are from Asia.
The CWTS Leiden rankings are for serious researchers who want to determine what institution is number one based on raw bibliometric data. Read the “information” section and download the entire dataset with additional metrics. (https://open.leidenranking.com/information/indicators).
CWTS Leiden resources:
Leiden Traditional: https://traditional.leidenranking.com/
Leiden Open: https://open.leidenranking.com/
RR ( 27 Mar. 2024 ).Ruth’s Rankings 59: CWTS Leiden introduces OpenAlex to its rankings: Is this the start of a new era of ranking bibliometrics? https://librarylearningspace.com/ruths-ranking-59-cwts-leiden-introduces-openalex-to-its-rankings-is-this-the-start-of-a-new-era-of-rankings-bibliometrics/
Van Eck, M.J.. Costas, R. ,Neoksse;. M.et.al (29 Oct 2025 ). The CWTS Leiden Ranking 2025 – More open, more inclusive, more informative. https://www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/the-cwts-leiden-ranking-2025-more-open-more-inclusive-more-informative
OTHER IREG UNIVERSITY RANKINGS
There are many other world rankings, some affiliated with regional organizations. New rankings are appearing, using open data. It is difficult to evaluate the quality of some of the new rankings. They use a variety of data sources. They may not be transparent in their methodologies. LSE(London School of Economics and Political Science recently published an article on predatory rankings misusing one of the open rankings, Webometrics (Moskovkin)
Harvard remains number one in most rankings based on publication outputs. Checking all the other rankings below show an increase, by output, of Chinese universities. Top U.S. universities are private and their acceptance rate for students is under 10 percent. Table 1 includes the rankings from IREG members, with the number of universities and country of origin for the rankings.
How should quality be measured? Number of articles, number of citations, number of highly cited articles, number of citations per faculty or non-bibliometric indicators? Doing a search of Web of Science, using the Leiden time frame of 2020-2023 and individual affiliations, Harvard is number one in publications with the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences(UCAS) second. Based on topics? UCAS and Indian Institute of Technology were tops in Engineering with no US university in the top 20. The US is stronger in biomedical topics led by Harvard.
We are all curious as to who is number one. However, the acceptance rate is fewer than 10% of students applying to top universities in the U.S. Rather than being concerned about the U.S. no longer dominating the lop lists, I am concerned about Academic Freedom and what role, if any, it is playing in university rankings.
See Appendix One for other rankings
PART 2: ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Universities are more than the number of articles they publish or students they graduate. They are part of the socio-economic systems of the countries they are in. Ruth’s Rankings expanded the scope of university rankings by introducing societal and economic indicators in 2016 (RR 21). This was followed in 2021 by RR 48 Part 2 and then Ruth’s Rankings 54.
2026 began with focus on Chinese universities publishing more articles than Harvard University. As illustrated by the data in CWTS Leiden in Part One, who was number one depends on which group of articles are selected. I personally believe that academic freedom is an important component in a university’s DNA. I waited to complete this article until the Academic Freedom ranking for 2026 were published to see how far the U.S. ranking had fallen. They dropped from the top group of 90 to 136 out of a total of 180. The fact that China has always been in the bottom 25 percent or less in academic freedom does not seem to matter. But it matters to me. See Table 67 2: and Exhibit 1 for selected comparisons below:
TABLE 67: 2: Comparative Freedom and Socio-Economic Rankings
| COUNTRIES RANKED BY Publications | Country | V-Dem Academic Freedom Rank | Human Freedom Rank | Reporters without Borders | Freedom House | Population Rank | Income GDP |
| 1 | China | 171 | 149 | 178 | 9 | 2 | 98 |
| 2 | United States | 136 | 15 | 57 | 81 | 3 | 11 |
| 3 | India | 157 | 110 | 151 | 62 | 1 | 172 |
| 4 | United Kingdom* | 82 | 19 | 20 | 92 | 22 | 25 |
| 5 | Germany | 22 | 17 | 11 | 74 | 19 | 23 |
| 6 | Italy | 52 | 31 | 49 | 87 | 25 | 35 |
| 7 | Japan | 62 | 19 | 66 | 96 | 12 | 54 |
| 8 | Canada | 33 | 12 | 21 | 97 | 38 | 26 |
| 9 | Spain | 26 | 28 | 23 | 91 | 32 | 41 |
Based on Web of Science Data, April 2026; * In all rankings but Freedom House, the higher the rank, the better the score
EXHIBIT 1: The Change in Academic Freedom for the U.S. and China for over 50 years
(Coppedge, et al. 2026. “V-Dem [Country-Year/Country-Date] Dataset v16” Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project)
 |
CONCLUSION
The purpose of this article has been to identify the number one university in the world, against the background of the battle between Harvard and Chinese universities in higher education articles. My conclusion is that universities are multi-dimensional. Publishing most articles does not make a university number one. Access to top universities are limited. 90 percent of students based on acceptance rates will never qualify for a top U.S. university. As shown in our example in Part One, Zhejiang University has the most publications in the 2025 CWTS Leiden Traditional rankings. Number one refers to one specific ranking and its methodology. Change the publications pool, and the rankings change.
Rankings are flawed but that does not mean that they cannot add value. Multidimensional rankings may aid in identifying universities by subject areas, job placement, sustainability, or student cities for examples. There is too much emphasis on “Who is Number One”. Academic Freedom should not be ignored.
Reporters w/o borders: Three of top five the same as 2021; top 15 are European. https://rsf.org/en/index
Freedom House: https://freedomhouse.org/country/scores
Academic Freedom Index (V-Dem) https://academic-freedom-index.net/research/Academic_Freedom_Index_Update_2026.pdf
Saliba, & Spannagel (2021). Should university rankings “turn a blind eye to varying levers of academic freedom?” (Kinzelbach, Scholars at risk network https://gppi.net/assets/KinzelbachEtAl_2021_Free_Universities_AFi-2020_upd.pdf
RESOURCES APPENDIX 1: Other University Rankings
The websites include the various metrics that are being used beyond publications
ARWU https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2025 ; a metric that adjusts by size
CWTS Leiden Rankings https://www.leidenranking.com/
Traditional: https://traditional.leidenranking.com/ranking/2025/list Open : https://open.leidenranking.com/
QS https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings . QS has metric in sustainability that incorporates the Academic Freedom Rank
THE https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/latest/world-ranking
US NEWS BEST GLOBAL UNIVERSITIES https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/search
NTU Rankings (1)– National Taiwan Universities – Performance rankings of Scientific papers for World Universities; only bibliometrics: Clarivate data http://nturanking.csti.tw/ranking/OverallRanking/
CWUR: Global 2000 List The center for world university rankings: using articles from a selected list of journals; includes am employability metric https://cwur.org/2025.php
URAP: University Ranking by academic performance; Data from Web Of Science, Scopus, and Google scholar; URAP’s goal is not to label universities best or worst but to “help universities identify potential areas of progress with respect to specific academic performance indicators. “; https://urapcenter.org/Rankings/2024-2025/World_Ranking_2024-2025
RUR Round University Ranking (Georgia) https://roundranking.com/. Uses The Lens for bibliometrics; includes an indicator for financial sustainability (https://www.lens.org/).
Scimago Institutions Rankings: https://www.scimagoir.com/ Scimago is unique in that it covers a variety of sectors, including companies. Over 10,000 universities are ranked. https://www.scimagoir.com/rankings.php?sector=Higher%20educ. Scimago Methodology includes three factors, research, societal which includes media mentions, and innovation, including patents : https://www.scimagoir.com/methodology.php
NATURE INDEX: uses 145 Nature journals; https://www.nature.com/nature-index/ ;https://www.nature.com/nature-index/institution-outputs/generate/all/global/academic
QS: Best student cities: 20 percent of the over score is University rankings https://www.topuniversities.com/best-student-cities
Webometrics: Global Web Rankings for Universities: for January 2026 – PDF https://www.webometrics.org/
RUTH’s Rankings and other articles
RR 48 (1 Mar 2023) https://librarylearningspace.com/ruths-rankings-48-part-2-country-and-company-environmental-rankings-add-new-sets-of-indicators-to-our-vocabulary/ and https://librarylearningspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/APPENDIX-48-2-B-Social-Indicators-Clive-edit.pdf.
Ruth’s Rankings 54: https://librarylearningspace.com/ruths-rankings-54-academic-freedom-and-its-relationship-to-university-rankings
Ruth’s Rankings 59 https://librarylearningspace.com/ruths-ranking-59-cwts-leiden-introduces-openalex-to-its-rankings-is-this-the-start-of-a-new-era-of-rankings-bibliometrics/)
Other Resources:
RR Feb 2026. https://librarylearningspace.com/ruths-rankings-end-of-the-year-review/
THE FUTURE: AI and university rankings
Aghnia, S. (1 Jul 2025). Beyond Rankings: Redefining University Success in the AI-Era. Higher Education Policy Institute https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/07/01/beyond-rankings-redefining-university-success-in-the-ai-era/
Chetty, R. & Friedman, J. (28 Jan 2026). How TIME and Statista determined the world’s top universities of 2026. https://time.com/7358185/top-universities-globally-2026/
Moskovkin, V. (25 Mar 2026). Predatory rankings jeopardise the value of Webometrics. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2026/03/25/predatory-university-rankings-jeopardise-the-value-of-webometrics/
Population: UN Dept of Economic and Social Affairs; World population 2024: https://population.un.org/wpp/
https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/
*Ruth A. Pagell is emeritus faculty librarian at Emory University. After working at Emory, she was the founding librarian of the Li Ka Shing Library at Singapore Management University and then adjunct faculty [teaching] in the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawaii. She has written and spoken extensively on various aspects of librarianship, including contributing articles to ACCESS – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3238-9674
