Webometrics 2021: VNU ranks 17th in Southeast Asia and in the world's top 1000

Figure 1: VNU ranked 17th among Southeast Asian universities and 1000th in the world in the Webometrics rankings in January 2021 (Source: Webometrics.info)

Webometrics is an automatic ranking that evaluates the digital capacity and the level of diffusion and influence of academic resources of higher education institutions based on indicators of the level of diffusion and influence of website systems and online information (visibility), openness of academic resources (openS) on Google Scholar, and scientific citation index on Scopus database system (excellence) of a higher education institution.

Figure 2: Top 10 Vietnamese higher education institutions in the Webometrics rankings in January 2021 (Source: Webometrics.info)

In this ranking, VNU is ranked No. 1 in Vietnam and 1000 in the world (up 96 places compared to the July 2020 ranking, at 17th in Southeast Asia and 237th in Asia).

In the January 2021 ranking period, Webometrics has changed its ranking method compared to the previous period (July 2020). Specifically, the criterion "Presence” (Amount of digital resources) has been eliminated in this period's ranking method and the criterion weight “Excellence” increased by 5% compared to the previous ranking period (from 35% in July 2020 to 40% in January 2021).

Regarding the ranking by each criterion, in this ranking, the ranking increased in all 3 criteria.Visibility(Level of influence);Openness(Openness) andExcellence(Excellent) – ranked 1651, 1115 and 1096 respectively (compared to 1987, 1507 and 1131) showing the comprehensive development of VNU in the Webometrics ranking, which has been demonstrated through the increase in the quality of international scientific publications, the level of academic dissemination as well as the scope of influence of the online resource system.

In 2020, VNU's rankings continued to maintain their position. For the first time, VNU appeared in the 2020 Asia University Rankings by Times Higher Education (THE Asia announced on June 4, 2020) with a position in the 201-250 group, ranking first in Vietnam in terms of overall ranking and having the highest score in the important criteria of Teaching, Research and Internationalization. Currently, VNU is also the only Vietnamese university in the 801-1000 group of the THE World University Rankings 2021.

On June 24, 2020, the QS University Rankings (Quacquarelli Symonds, UK) announced the results of the QS Top 50 Under 50 2021 ranking, for universities established less than 50 years ago. Accordingly, VNU, Hanoi, was included in this ranking for the first time, with a position in the group of 101-150 young universities with top educational quality in the world. Thus, VNU, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City National University became the only two higher education institutions in Vietnam to be named in this ranking.

On September 2, 2020, Times Higher Education (THE) announced the results of the World University Rankings (WUR 2021). VNU and two other Vietnamese universities were ranked by THE along with 1,527 leading universities in the world. According to the ranking report, VNU is in the 801-1000 group in the world; Ho Chi Minh City National University and Hanoi University of Science and Technology are in the 1001+ group. Thus, VNU is the only Vietnamese university in the top 1,000 universities in the world in this ranking.

Times Higher Education (THE) evaluates universities globally based on research into the core missions of a university, according to a set of standard measurement indicators to provide comprehensive and fair comparisons. Therefore, THE is trusted by students, scholars, higher education institutions, governments and academics. Based on the scientific database SCOPUS (by Elsevier Publishing), independent surveys and university data, THE's scoring and data processing are supervised by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), an independent, professional auditing organization.

According to the ranking results, VNU has continuously ranked in the group of 801-1000 best universities in the world. Although it has continuously maintained this ranking group on the ranking, VNU's ranking points have increased, leading to a gradual improvement in its absolute ranking. Specifically, in the two previous rankings, VNU ranked in the top 78.5% (2019) and 74.9% (2020) of leading universities. In this ranking, VNU has risen to the top 67.5% of the world's leading universities.

On November 25, 2020, the Quacquarelli Symonds Asia University Rankings (QS AUR) announced the ranking results. VNU has reached the group of 24% of leading higher education institutions in Asia (position 160). Compared to the best achievement in the 2019 ranking, VNU has narrowed the gap with the top by 0.7%.

QS AUR 2021 ranks 634 higher education institutions in Asia (of which 93 are participating in the ranking for the first time). This ranking results are based on data from 1.6 million scholar nominations and 310 thousand employer nominations, collected 102,500 scholar responses and 52,000 global employers, analyzed 138 million citations (in the period 2014-2019) from 18 million articles (in the period 2014-2018).