The technical details of the methodological evolution are striking. In 2022, the ARWU subject methodology rested on five indicators applied uniformly across all disciplines: Top Journal Papers (TOP), which counted publications in high-impact journals selected through the Academic Excellence Survey; Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI), which adjusted citation counts by discipline to allow fair comparison across fields; International Collaboration (IC), which measured the proportion of publications co-authored with institutions abroad; Number of Papers (PUB), a pure volume measure of output per institution; and Award, which recognized major academic prizes. In 2023 the structure remained largely intact, with the only notable refinement being the inclusion of 31 conferences within the TOP indicator for Computer Science and Engineering. Education saw no modifications at all that year, a silence the researchers interpret as evidence that the methodology’s designers were still calibrating their metrics for technical fields while leaving the social sciences largely untouched.

Then came 2024, and with it a genuine turning point. The methodology was reorganized into five weighted categories: World-Class Faculty (20 percent), incorporating Highly Cited Researchers along with new Leadership and Editor metrics; World-Class Output (15 percent), focused on high-impact publications; High-Quality Research (15 percent), introducing first-quartile journal papers (Q1); Research Impact (20 percent), retaining CNCI; and International Collaboration (30 percent), whose weighting was dramatically increased. Two changes stand out. The PUB indicator, which had rewarded sheer publication volume, was eliminated entirely, a clear signal that the ranking now prioritizes quality over quantity. And the traditional Award indicator was replaced by leadership metrics such as journal editorship and scholarly leadership roles, shifting recognition from historical prizes to present-day institutional influence within global academic networks.

For Spanish universities, the consequences of these shifts were heterogeneous and, in places, sobering. Between 2022 and 2023, the average CNCI score across the Spanish institutions in the Education category fell by one point, but with high dispersion: some universities, notably Santiago de Compostela and the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), improved markedly while others declined. International collaboration dropped by an average of 7.8 points, a decline the authors link plausibly to lingering mobility restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic and a possible prioritization of national projects. Most dramatic was the TOP indicator, which fell by an average of 11.2 points, with every Spanish university in the category recording a value of zero in 2023, meaning that no institution managed to publish in the high-impact journals selected by the ranking’s survey. Meanwhile, the Q1 indicator, measuring the share of publications in the top quartile of journals, rose by an average of 4.1 percentage points, suggesting that while Spanish education researchers were publishing in respectable venues, the very top tier remained out of reach.

The 2024 data, however, delivered a genuine surprise: small Spanish universities, including Huelva, Alcalá, Alicante and Córdoba, appeared in the Education category for the first time, joining the giants such as the University of Barcelona and the Autonomous University of Madrid. Their scores tell a nuanced story. On the faculty quality indicator, Huelva scored 22.4, Alcalá 12.9 and Alicante 7.9, well below the consolidated universities whose scores exceed 30 points, reflecting staff with less international projection, likely tied to institutional size and a historical focus on teaching rather than high-impact research. Yet in research quality the picture brightens considerably: Huelva scored 20.3, Alcalá 18.4 and Alicante 26.7, moderate values that, while below the leaders, meet acceptable standards. Research impact proved remarkably homogeneous among the smaller institutions, with values near 33.6 for Huelva and Alcalá and 33.3 for Alicante, demonstrating that despite lower output volumes, their published work resonates within the field.

Why does Education fare so poorly under these metrics in the first place? The study digs into the structural idiosyncrasy of the discipline. Educational research is overwhelmingly produced by educators and trainers disseminating classroom innovations, teaching methods and applied projects, often through qualitative methodologies and with a fundamentally local or national audience. An article about how to teach medicine is likely to appear in a medical journal rather than an education journal, scattering the field’s output across countless venues and complicating any attempt at homogeneous classification. Education also lacks the internationally prestigious prizes that fuel the Award and faculty indicators in Medicine or Physics, and its first-quartile journals are concentrated in English-speaking and Chinese-speaking countries, marginalizing research published in other languages. The authors note that many Web of Science journals indexed in Education-related categories are actually oriented toward educational technology and informatics with a techno-pedagogical focus rather than pedagogy in the broader sense, further skewing what counts as visible scholarship.

The 2024 methodology amplifies some of these problems even as it solves others. The elimination of PUB removes the crude volume penalty that hurt small institutions, but the new World-Class Faculty category rewards universities wealthy enough to attract or train renowned academics, hold journal editorships and accumulate highly cited researchers, generating what the authors describe as structural inequalities between institutions. The International Collaboration category, now weighted at a hefty 30 percent, penalizes universities with limited resources, language constraints or little international tradition; the small Spanish universities scored dramatically low here, with Huelva at 6.8, Alcalá at 6.3 and Alicante at 5.4, far below the national leaders. The researchers point to programs such as Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe, along with Latin American thematic networks that share a common cultural space with Spain, as practical avenues for closing this gap. The CNCI indicator, meanwhile, continues to disadvantage contextualized, regionally relevant studies that naturally attract fewer international citations than work in Physics or Health Sciences.

The authors do not simply critique; they propose a strategy. Spanish universities, they argue, should pursue a diversified approach that improves ranking performance without compromising educational mission: publish strategically in first-quartile journals while maintaining outlets for local and qualitative work; strengthen international networks through collaborative projects and global consortia; invest in faculty development and stability, including nominations for international awards and leadership roles in journals and scientific associations; and build institutional visibility programs that showcase educational innovation and contextual impact. For smaller universities, entry into the ranking should be read not as exposure of weakness but as an opportunity to carve out a differentiated niche, attract external academic talent and consolidate local talent-development programs that could, over time, lift the faculty indicators.

The study is candid about its own limitations. It depends on bibliometric data from Web of Science and Scopus, databases that privilege English-language, high-impact publications and under-represent research in other languages and formats such as books, pedagogical reports and local studies, precisely the formats in which Education produces much of its value. The lack of disaggregated sub-area data within Education makes it hard to assess how indicators affect fields like educational technology, inclusive pedagogy or teacher training. And the ranking’s constant methodological churn, eliminating PUB one year and introducing World-Class Faculty the next, complicates longitudinal comparison. The authors call for alternative metrics that capture local relevance, community impact and pedagogical innovation, for critical review of the major bibliometric databases, and for qualitative case studies and expert interviews to understand how institutions actually navigate these systems.

The broader message resonates far beyond Spain. Global rankings such as ARWU, Times Higher Education and QS have become the dominant lenses through which university prestige is perceived, yet their indicators were designed mainly for scientific and technical disciplines, biasing evaluation against the social sciences and humanities. The 2024 Shanghai methodology represents real progress, a shift from counting papers to weighing quality, leadership and collaboration, but it still embodies what the researchers call a marked positivist vision, prioritizing theoretical, generalizable research over the applied, locally embedded studies that train teachers and shape educational systems. As the authors conclude, the true value of educational research lies in its capacity to transform lives and build inclusive societies, and evaluation systems must evolve so that global excellence and local relevance can coexist, ensuring that small institutions and applied disciplines are not merely counted, but genuinely valued.

Subject of Research: The impact of Shanghai Ranking methodology changes (2022–2024) on the positioning of Spanish universities in the Education category

Article Title: Spanish universities in the Shanghai ranking in education (2022–2024)

Article References: Estrada-Molina, O., Mora-Jaureguialde, B., & Aguaded, I. (2025). Spanish universities in the Shanghai ranking in education (2022–2024). Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, 14(1), Article 20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44322-025-00042-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44322-025-00042-z

Keywords: Shanghai Ranking, ARWU, university rankings, Spanish universities, higher education, Education discipline, bibliometrics, research evaluation, international collaboration, methodology, qualitative research, academic rankings

Beyond the four top-50 subjects, the ranking revealed considerable depth across the university’s portfolio. Seven subjects in total placed among the world’s top 100, with Dentistry and Oral Sciences falling in the 51–75 band and both Economics and Political Sciences landing in the 76–100 range. Taken together, the Hebrew University had 30 subjects included in the global ranking, and 13 of those placed among the world’s top 150. In addition to its seven top-100 subjects, the university ranked in the 101–150 range in Atmospheric Science, Biological Sciences, Human Biological Sciences, Sociology, Education, and Psychology. For a single institution of roughly comparable size to many mid-tier international research universities, that breadth of high placement is a notable statistical achievement.

The Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, often referred to as GRAS and colloquially associated with the broader family of Shanghai rankings, is published annually and assesses universities across 57 disciplines spanning the natural sciences, engineering, life sciences, medical sciences, and social sciences. The 2026 edition is one of the largest subject-level assessments in the world, incorporating approximately 20,000 academic subject units drawn from around 2,000 universities in roughly 100 countries and regions. Unlike overall institutional rankings, which compress an entire university’s performance into a single number, subject rankings allow analysts to see precisely where a university’s research strengths and weaknesses lie, discipline by discipline.

Methodologically, GRAS relies on internationally comparable indicators grouped into five categories: world-class faculty, world-class research output, high-quality research, research impact, and international collaboration. Within these categories, the ranking considers factors such as influential journal publications, citation impact, international academic awards, the presence of highly cited researchers, leadership roles in international academic organizations, and the extent of research collaboration across borders. This multi-indicator approach is designed to reduce the distorting effect of any single metric and to capture different dimensions of academic excellence, from the sheer volume of published work to the recognition a department’s scholars receive from the global scientific community.

For Mathematics, the Hebrew University’s 24th-place finish continues a long tradition. The discipline has historically been one of the university’s flagship fields, associated with pioneering work in logic, analysis, and theoretical computer science, and the 2026 result suggests that this legacy remains fully intact in an era of intensifying global competition. The 17th-place ranking in Communication is equally striking, reflecting a field that has grown rapidly in importance as researchers grapple with digital media, misinformation, and the transformation of public discourse. High placement in Communication signals strong citation performance and international visibility in a discipline where publication venues and scholarly networks are increasingly global.

The university’s showing in Law, at 36th, and Public Administration, at 44th, adds a professional-school dimension to its research profile. These fields are evaluated alongside the same bibliometric and reputational indicators as the natural sciences, which makes strong placements particularly meaningful, since legal scholarship and public administration research are often published in national or regional venues and in languages other than English. Achieving top-50 global status in both fields indicates that the Hebrew University’s legal and policy scholars are publishing in leading international journals, attracting citations from abroad, and participating in cross-border academic networks at rates comparable to the world’s most prominent institutions.

The presence of Dentistry and Oral Sciences in the 51–75 band, along with Economics and Political Sciences in the 76–100 range, further illustrates the breadth of the university’s research base. In the life sciences, placements in the 101–150 range for Biological Sciences and Human Biological Sciences reflect sustained output in fields ranging from molecular biology to neuroscience, while Atmospheric Science points to growing activity in climate and earth-systems research. Social science placements in Sociology, Education, and Psychology round out a profile in which nearly half of the university’s ranked subjects sit within the top 150 worldwide, a ratio that few institutions in the region can match.

University leadership framed the results as a validation of long-term investment in research quality. Prof. Tamir Sheafer, President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the results reflect both the exceptional quality and the remarkable breadth of research at the institution. Across mathematics, the life sciences, dentistry, law, communication, economics, and public policy, he noted, researchers are advancing knowledge that deepens understanding of the world and helps address its most pressing challenges. He described the international recognition as a testament to the creativity, rigor, and dedication of the academic community, and to the university’s continuing role at the forefront of research in Israel and worldwide.

The broader significance of the result extends beyond institutional pride. Subject-level rankings of this kind are closely watched by prospective graduate students, international research partners, funding agencies, and faculty recruits, all of whom use them as a proxy for the strength of specific departments. A concentration of top-50 placements in fields as varied as Mathematics, Communication, Law, and Public Administration can influence where talented early-career researchers choose to apply, where collaborative projects are initiated, and how international consortia are assembled. For Israeli academia as a whole, the result reinforces the country’s reputation for research excellence in a small national system that consistently punches above its weight in global metrics.

The 2026 edition of the ranking also illustrates how subject-level evaluation has matured into a sophisticated analytical tool. By combining publication counts in influential journals, normalized citation impact, international awards, highly cited researcher counts, organizational leadership, and collaboration measures, GRAS attempts to capture a multidimensional picture of departmental performance that a single composite score cannot provide. For the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the 2026 results, with four subjects in the global top 50, seven in the top 100, and 13 in the top 150 out of 30 ranked subjects, provide a detailed, data-driven map of where the institution stands in the international research landscape, and a benchmark against which its future performance will be measured when the next edition of the ranking is published.

Subject of Research: Global university subject rankings evaluating research performance across academic disciplines

Article Title: Hebrew University leads Israel with four subjects among world’s top 50 in 2026 Shanghai ranking

Article References: Hebrew University leads Israel with four subjects among world’s top 50 in 2026 Shanghai ranking. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Hebrew University, Shanghai Ranking, Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, Mathematics, Communication, Law, Public Administration, Israel, university rankings, research impact, higher education, academic collaboration