Distributed Computing
ETH Zurich
Ranking of Computer Science and Information Technology Universities and Research Labs

2018 Ranking of Computer Science and Information Technology Universities and Research Labs

So you decided you want to study computer science or information technology? Which university or lab should you join? Below is the ranking.

How is the ranking done?

The ranking is based on Guide2Research, a web page that ranks individual researchers in computer science and information technology (computer engineering, data science, etc.). Guide2Research takes its data probably from Google Scholar. At the heart of the Guide2Research ranking is the so-called h-index, which roughly measures how prolific a researcher is. More precisely, a researcher has an h-index of X, if he/she published at least X papers that have been cited at least X times each. Unfortunately, Guide2Research only lists about 2,000 researchers with an h-index above 40. Stanford is the top university because it features 47 researchers with h-index at least 40, and together (simply summed up), these 47 researchers (professors mostly) have an h-index of 3801. Congratulations, Stanford!

Why does the ranking make sense?

Well, all these rankings are fundamentally flawed, and so is this one (see below for some self-critisism). In my opinion, the main argument in favor of this ranking is its simplicity. It can be explained in a single paragraph, and does not include any clutter and almost no magic parameters. Mostly I would argue in favor of this ranking because others make even less sense; I will discuss the most important other rankings (and their limitations) below.

Finally, the ranking:
Rank University Country Rating Faculty
1 Stanford University United States 3801 47
2 Carnegie Mellon University United States 3141 41
3 MIT United States 3020 41
4 University of California, Berkeley United States 2798 34
5 Microsoft Research United States 2651 41
6 INRIA France 2283 43
7 University of Illinois United States 2101 30
8 University of Southern California United States 1951 29
9 University of California, San Diego United States 1866 30
10 Columbia University United States 1699 22
11 École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne Switzerland 1697 26
12 University of California, Los Angeles United States 1562 22
13 Georgia Institute of Technology United States 1407 23
14 University of Maryland, College Park United States 1401 21
15 University of Washington United States 1399 21
16 IBM Research United States 1390 26
17 University of Texas at Austin United States 1368 21
18 Google United States 1304 21
19 University of Toronto Canada 1210 20
20 University of Oxford United Kingdom 1185 18
21 University of Michigan United States 1159 18
22 University of California, Santa Barbara United States 1123 17
23 University of California, Irvine United States 1094 17
24 ETH Zurich Switzerland 1091 15
25 Cornell University United States 1023 15
26 University of Minnesota United States 993 14
27 Princeton University United States 954 14
28 University of Wisconsin-Madison United States 935 15
29 Pennsylvania State University United States 848 13
30 Rutgers University United States 847 14
31 University of Pennsylvania United States 844 13
32 University of California, Santa Cruz United States 815 12
33 University of Massachusetts Amherst United States 811 11
34 New York University United States 810 13
35 Imperial College United Kingdom 781 12
36 Duke University United States 776 11
37 Purdue University United States 754 12
38 Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Hong Kong 730 11
39 University of Waterloo Canada 726 13
40 RWTH Aachen University Germany 694 10
41 Hebrew University Israel 688 12
42 The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong 685 11
43 University College London United Kingdom 662 11
44 Tel Aviv University Israel 652 10
45 University of Leuven Belgium 650 9
46 National University of Singapore Singapore 588 10
47 University of British Columbia Canada 575 11
48 University of Manchester United Kingdom 573 9
49 Catholic University of Louvain Belgium 570 11
50 University of Florida United States 553 9
51 Technical University of Munich Germany 537 9
52 University of Tokyo Japan 535 10
53 Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Israel 530 9
54 Technical University of Berlin Germany 517 8
55 Ohio State University United States 517 9
56 KTH Royal Institute of Technology Sweden 508 10
57 Michigan State University United States 503 6
58 Delft University of Technology Netherlands 502 9
59 California Institute of Technology United States 495 7
60 Rice University United States 491 7
61 Virginia Tech United States 488 8
62 Eindhoven University of Technology Netherlands 488 10
63 University of Chicago United States 486 7
64 Boston University United States 475 7
65 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute United States 473 8
66 University of California, Davis United States 470 8
67 Max Planck Institute for Informatics Germany 466 6
68 University of New South Wales Australia 459 9
69 Stony Brook University United States 449 8
70 VU University Amsterdam Netherlands 437 8
71 Johns Hopkins University United States 431 6
72 Yale University United States 428 7
73 University of Alberta Canada 426 7
74 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill United States 425 6
75 University of Melbourne Australia 401 6
76 University of Cambridge United Kingdom 379 5
77 Washington University in St. Louis United States 378 6
78 Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Germany 377 7
79 University at Buffalo United States 372 6
80 University of Rochester United States 367 6
81 Darmstadt University of Technology Germany 365 7
82 Northwestern University United States 355 6
83 University of California, Riverside United States 354 6
84 University of Southampton United Kingdom 354 6
85 University of Ottawa Canada 353 6
86 University of Edinburgh United Kingdom 348 6
87 University of Technology, Sydney Australia 346 6
88 University of Trento Italy 340 6
89 University of Rome La Sapienza Italy 339 6
90 Australian National University Australia 331 5
91 University of Stuttgart Germany 328 6
92 University of Amsterdam Netherlands 323 6
93 New Jersey Institute of Technology United States 315 5
94 University of Virginia United States 314 5
95 Nanyang Technological University Singapore 309 6
96 Radboud University Nijmegen Netherlands 300 6
97 Weizmann Institute of Science Israel 299 5
98 Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems Germany 291 4
99 Harvard University United States 289 5
100 Graz University of Technology Austria 287 5
101 City University of Hong Kong Hong Kong 286 4
102 Indian Statistical Institute India 286 5
103 University of Sydney Australia 284 5
104 Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse France 283 3
105 University of Illinois at Chicago United States 271 3
106 University of Luxembourg Luxembourg 264 5
107 Free University of Brussels Belgium 263 4
108 Texas A&M University United States 262 4
109 Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay India 262 5
110 George Mason University United States 258 4
111 University of Freiburg Germany 258 4
112 Brown University United States 252 4
113 Utrecht University Netherlands 250 5
114 University of Granada Spain 248 3
115 Arizona State University United States 248 4
116 Lancaster University United Kingdom 248 5
117 University of Surrey United Kingdom 247 4
118 City University of New York United States 244 4
119 The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hong Kong 242 3
120 North Carolina State University United States 240 4
121 Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Greece 236 4
122 The University of Texas at Arlington United States 233 3
123 King's College London United Kingdom 232 4
124 University of Iowa United States 231 4
125 University of Nottingham United Kingdom 230 4
126 TU Wien Austria 230 4
127 University of Bologna Italy 229 4
128 University of Texas at Dallas United States 229 4
129 Institute of Science and Technology Austria Austria 224 3
130 University of Utah United States 224 4
131 National Taiwan University Taiwan 224 4
132 Brunel University United Kingdom 223 3
133 Federal University of Minas Gerais Brazil 223 5
134 University of Montreal Canada 220 3
135 Ghent University Belgium 217 4
136 University of Maryland, Baltimore County United States 216 3
137 Carleton University Canada 208 4
138 National Research Council Italy 206 4
139 Polytechnic Institute of New York University United States 205 3
140 Colorado State University United States 203 4
141 Queen Mary University of London United Kingdom 202 3
142 Vanderbilt University United States 195 3
143 University of Colorado Boulder United States 193 3
144 University of Hong Kong Hong Kong 193 4
145 University of Pittsburgh United States 192 3
146 University of Geneva Switzerland 190 3
147 University of Campinas Brazil 187 4
148 Newcastle University United Kingdom 186 4
149 University of Notre Dame United States 184 3
150 Tokyo Institute of Technology Japan 184 4
151 Seoul National University South Korea 182 3
152 Simon Fraser University Canada 182 3
153 Ecole Normale Superieure France 181 3
154 University of Arizona United States 181 3
155 Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Germany 179 3
156 Chinese Academy of Sciences China 179 3
157 University of Bern Switzerland 174 3
158 University of Erlangen-Nuremberg Germany 172 3
159 The Open University United Kingdom 172 3
160 Singapore Management University Singapore 172 3
161 University of Tennessee United States 171 2
162 Polytechnic University of Milan Italy 171 3
163 Tsinghua University China 168 3
164 University of York United Kingdom 166 3
165 Supélec France 163 3
166 University of Konstanz Germany 161 3
167 University of Nebraska - Lincoln United States 160 3
168 Uppsala University Sweden 157 2
169 Aalborg University Denmark 156 2
170 University of Bristol United Kingdom 156 3
171 University of Bergen Norway 153 3
172 University of Mannheim Germany 152 3
173 Salk Institute United States 151 1
174 Polish Academy of Sciences Poland 151 2
175 Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research Switzerland 149 2
176 HP Labs United States 149 3
177 National ICT Australia (NICTA) Australia 149 3
178 University of Calgary Canada 148 2
179 Polytechnic University of Valencia Spain 146 3
180 University of Birmingham United Kingdom 145 2
181 Linköping University Sweden 145 2
182 Wright State University United States 144 2
183 Dartmouth College United States 144 2
184 University of Essex United Kingdom 144 3
185 Temple University United States 142 2
186 National Taiwan University of Science and Technology Taiwan 142 2
187 University of Chile Chile 142 2
188 Syracuse University United States 142 2
189 Tampere University of Technology Finland 140 3
190 Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro Brazil 139 3
191 University of Sheffield United Kingdom 136 2
192 University of Texas at San Antonio United States 136 2
193 CWI, Amsterdam Netherlands 136 3
194 King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Saudi Arabia 135 2
195 Braunschweig University of Technology Germany 135 3
196 University of New Brunswick Canada 133 2
197 Amazon.com, Inc. United States 133 2
198 Monash University Australia 133 3
199 Peking University China 132 2
200 Technicolor SA France 132 2
201 University of Adelaide Australia 131 2
202 University of Waikato New Zealand 128 2
203 Koc University Turkey 128 2
204 Polytechnic University of Turin Italy 127 3
205 Sourcecode Capital China 126 1
206 McMaster University Canada 126 2
207 Saarland University Germany 125 2
208 Aalto University Finland 124 2
209 Adobe Systems United States 121 2
210 Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration Austria 120 2
211 Dresden University of Technology Germany 120 2
212 HEC Montréal Canada 119 1
213 University of Delaware United States 119 2
214 University College Dublin Ireland 118 2
215 University of Tehran Iran 117 2
216 University of Oulu Finland 116 2
217 Tijuana Institute of Technology Mexico 116 2
218 SRI International United States 115 2
219 RMIT University Australia 115 2
220 University of Alabama United States 115 2
221 Iona College United States 114 1
222 Florida International University United States 114 2
223 University of Sannio Italy 113 2
224 Facebook United States 112 1
225 University of Kansas United States 111 2
226 Swinburne University of Technology Australia 111 2
227 University of South Australia Australia 111 2
228 Bar-Ilan University Israel 111 2
229 Zhejiang University China 111 2
230 Institute of Telecommunication Portugal 111 2
231 Bielefeld University Germany 111 2
232 Czech Technical University in Prague Czech Republic 110 2
233 University of Groningen Netherlands 108 2
234 Ulm University Germany 108 2
235 Hong Kong Baptist University Hong Kong 108 2
236 Northeastern University United States 108 2
237 Naval Postgraduate School United States 107 2
238 Tohoku University Japan 107 2
239 Computer Science Laboratory for Mechanics and Engineering Sciences (LIMSI) France 107 2
240 Cardiff University United Kingdom 107 2
241 University of Kentucky United States 106 2
242 Portland State University United States 106 2
243 Brigham Young University United States 106 2
244 University of Helsinki Finland 106 2
245 University of Quebec Canada 105 2
246 University of Missouri United States 105 2
247 University of Bremen Germany 105 2
248 University of Pisa Italy 104 2
249 Queen\'s University Canada 104 2
250 University of Lugano Switzerland 104 2
251 Toutiao, Bytedance China 103 1
252 Harbin Institute of Technology China 102 1
253 National Supercomputing Center Spain 102 2
254 Georgia State University United States 102 2
255 University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Italy 101 2
256 University of Central Florida United States 100 1
257 École Polytechnique de Montréal Canada 100 2
258 Paris Dauphine University France 100 2
259 University of Potsdam Germany 100 2
260 Kyoto University Japan 100 2
261 Spanish National Research Council Spain 99 2
262 University of Queensland Australia 99 2
263 Polytechnic University of Catalonia Spain 99 2
264 University of Louisiana at Lafayette United States 98 2
265 National Institute of Standards and Technology United States 98 2
266 University of Magdeburg Germany 98 2
267 University of Zurich Switzerland 98 2
268 NARA Institute of Science and Technology Japan 98 2
269 Asia University, Taiwan Taiwan 97 2
270 University of Florence Italy 97 2
271 Worcester Polytechnic Institute United States 96 2
272 University of Siena Italy 96 2
273 University of Basel Switzerland 96 2
274 University of Grenoble France 95 2
275 Tufts University United States 95 2
276 Fondazione Bruno Kessler Italy 95 2
277 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory United States 95 2
278 Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology South Korea 94 2
279 Sandia National Laboratories United States 94 2
280 Heidelberg University Germany 93 2
281 University of South Florida United States 92 2
282 Bell Labs United States 92 2
283 Shanghai Jiaotong University China 92 2
284 Nanjing University China 89 1
285 Luleå University of Technology Sweden 89 1
286 University of Liverpool United Kingdom 89 2
287 University of Marburg Germany 89 2
288 University of Koblenz and Landau Germany 87 1
289 Athens University of Economics and Business Greece 87 2
290 University of Tübingen Germany 86 2
291 Palo Alto Research Center United States 85 1
292 University of West Florida United States 85 1
293 The BioRobotics Institute Italy 85 1
294 McGill University Canada 85 2
295 Athens Information Technology Greece 85 2
296 National University of Ireland, Galway Ireland 83 1
297 University of Twente Netherlands 83 2
298 Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Israel 83 2
299 MIR Labs United States 82 1
300 Missouri University of Science and Technology United States 82 1
301 Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur India 81 1
302 Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences China 81 1
303 University of Houston United States 81 1
304 AT&T United States 81 1
305 Cinvestav Mexico 80 1
306 Feng Chia University Taiwan 80 1
307 Case Western Reserve University United States 80 1
308 Poznan University of Technology Poland 80 1
309 University of Wolverhampton United Kingdom 79 1
310 University of Regina Canada 78 1
311 Indiana University United States 77 1
312 Baidu China 77 1
313 Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences Germany 75 1
314 University of Manitoba Canada 74 1
315 University of New Mexico United States 73 1
316 Université du Québec à Montréal Canada 73 1
317 National Institutes of Health United States 71 1
318 Xidian University China 71 1
319 University of Padova Italy 71 1
320 Agency for Science, Technology and Research Singapore 71 1
321 Oregon State University United States 70 1
322 University of Athens Greece 70 1
323 Cogobuy Group Hong Kong 70 1
324 Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition United States 70 1
325 University of Wisconsin United States 69 1
326 Ngee Ann Polytechnic Singapore 69 1
327 Illinois Institute of Technology United States 69 1
328 University of Iceland Iceland 68 1
329 Vrije Universiteit Brussel Belgium 68 1
330 University of Saskatchewan Canada 68 1
331 University of Murcia Spain 68 1
332 Free University of Bozen-Bolzano Italy 67 1
333 University of Tartu Estonia 67 1
334 Yahoo! Labs United States 67 1
335 Leibniz University of Hanover Germany 67 1
336 Florida Atlantic University United States 66 1
337 Natural Selection United States 65 1
338 University of Milan Italy 65 1
339 Queensland University of Technology Australia 65 1
340 Osaka Prefecture University Japan 65 1
341 Ecole Centrale de Paris France 65 1
342 Ricoh Innovations, Inc. United States 64 1
343 Siemens Corporate Technology Germany 64 1
344 Max Planck Institute for Software Systems Germany 64 1
345 Osaka University Japan 64 1
346 DePaul University United States 64 1
347 Telefonica Research Spain 64 1
348 Aarhus University Denmark 63 1
349 National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics Mexico 62 1
350 Qatar Computing Research Institute Qatar 62 1
351 Villanova University United States 62 1
352 University of Warsaw Poland 61 1
353 Brandeis University United States 61 1
354 Istanbul Technical University Turkey 61 1
355 Dublin City University Ireland 61 1
356 Hasso Plattner Institute Germany 61 1
357 EURECOM France 60 1
358 Ruhr University Bochum Germany 60 1
359 Technical University of Dortmund Germany 60 1
360 Nuance Communications United States 59 1
361 Technical University of Madrid Spain 59 1
362 University of Vienna Austria 59 1
363 University of Kent United Kingdom 59 1
364 Washington State University United States 58 1
365 Apple United States 58 1
366 Research Institute of Computer Science and Random Systems France 58 1
367 ClopiNet / ChaLearn United States 57 1
368 University of Castile-La Mancha Spain 57 1
369 University of Memphis United States 57 1
370 Bytedance Technology China 57 1
371 University of Cagliari Italy 57 1
372 Macquarie University Australia 57 1
373 University of St Andrews United Kingdom 56 1
374 University of Extremadura Spain 56 1
375 University of Valencia Spain 56 1
376 Louisiana State University Shreveport United States 56 1
377 University of Vigo Spain 55 1
378 University of Leipzig Germany 55 1
379 Blekinge College of Technology Sweden 55 1
380 National Technical University of Athens Greece 55 1
381 La Trobe University Australia 55 1
382 Memorial University of Newfoundland Canada 55 1
383 Public University of Navarra Spain 55 1
384 Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences Germany 55 1
385 Leiden University Netherlands 54 1
386 Chalmers University of Technology Sweden 54 1
387 Deakin University Australia 54 1
388 Huazhong University of Science and Technology China 54 1
389 National Chung Hsing University Taiwan 54 1
390 University Of Málaga Spain 54 1
391 National Laboratory for Scientific Computing Brazil 54 1
392 EMC Corporation United States 54 1
393 Iowa State University United States 54 1
394 Old Dominion University United States 54 1
395 University of Wollongong Australia 54 1
396 University of Salerno Italy 54 1
397 Highspot United States 53 1
398 Grenoble Institute of Technology France 53 1
399 Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Netherlands 53 1
400 National Autonomous University of Mexico Mexico 53 1
401 Nagoya University Japan 53 1
402 University of Idaho United States 53 1
403 Rovira i Virgili University Spain 53 1
404 Information Technologies Institute Greece 53 1
405 University of Passau Germany 53 1
406 Bangor University United Kingdom 52 1
407 University of New Hampshire United States 52 1
408 University of Patras Greece 52 1
409 Trinity College, Dublin Ireland 52 1
410 York University, Canada Canada 52 1
411 University of Parma Italy 52 1
412 Oak Ridge National Laboratory United States 52 1
413 University of Calabria Italy 52 1
414 Madrid Institute of Advanced Studies Spain 52 1
415 VoiceBox Technologies Inc United States 51 1
416 University of Macau Macao SAR 51 1
417 Georgetown University United States 51 1
418 Concordia University Canada 51 1
419 University of Bergamo Italy 51 1
420 University of Paris V: René Descartes France 51 1
421 San Diego State University United States 51 1
422 L\'École de technologie supérieure Canada 51 1
423 University of Colorado at Colorado Springs United States 51 1
424 Los Alamos National Laboratory United States 50 1
425 Lehigh University United States 50 1
426 Birkbeck, University of London United Kingdom 50 1
427 Bogazici University Turkey 50 1
428 University of Western Ontario Canada 50 1
429 University of Insubria Italy 50 1
430 Autonomous University of Madrid Spain 50 1
431 Pontifical Catholic University of Parana Brazil 50 1
432 University of Hawaii United States 49 1
433 Pompeu Fabra University Spain 49 1
434 Khalifa University United Arab Emirates 49 1
435 École normale supérieure de Lyon France 49 1
436 Nanjing Normal University China 49 1
437 Disney Research United States 48 1
438 International Computer Science Institute United States 48 1
439 University of Duisburg-Essen Germany 48 1
440 University of Wurzburg Germany 48 1
441 University of Georgia United States 48 1
442 Griffith University Australia 48 1
443 Yonsei University South Korea 48 1
444 Kyushu University Japan 48 1
445 Federal Fluminense University Brazil 48 1
446 Ozyegin University Turkey 48 1
447 Virginia Commonwealth University United States 48 1
448 University of Sussex United Kingdom 48 1
449 Laboratoire Jean Kuntzmann France 47 1
450 Broadcom Corporation United States 47 1
451 Incaa Designs United States 47 1
452 University of Miami United States 47 1
453 University of the West of England United Kingdom 47 1
454 Hunan University China 47 1
455 University of Glasgow United Kingdom 47 1
456 Wayne State University United States 47 1
457 Université du Québec en Outaouais Canada 47 1
458 CEA tech France 47 1
459 Southern University of Science and Technology China 46 1
460 Oracle Labs United States 46 1
461 University of Warwick United Kingdom 46 1
462 Heriot-Watt University United Kingdom 46 1
463 University of Belgrade Serbia 46 1
464 University of Liège Belgium 46 1
465 University of Texas at El Paso United States 46 1
466 University of Augsburg Germany 46 1
467 University of Bordeaux 1 France 46 1
468 INRA, Toulouse France 46 1
469 Birmingham City University United Kingdom 46 1
470 University of Piraeus Greece 46 1
471 Dassault Systèmes France 46 1
472 Korea University South Korea 46 1
473 University of Lisbon Portugal 46 1
474 University of Pavia Italy 46 1
475 Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studie India 46 1
476 University of Malta Malta 46 1
477 Erciyes University Turkey 45 1
478 University of South Carolina United States 45 1
479 Verona University Italy 45 1
480 Athabasca University Canada 45 1
481 University of Mons Belgium 45 1
482 University of Bonn Germany 45 1
483 Jagiellonian University Poland 45 1
484 INESC-ID Portugal 45 1
485 RuleQuest Research Australia 44 1
486 University of Neuchatel Switzerland 44 1
487 University of Connecticut United States 44 1
488 University of Zaragoza Spain 44 1
489 Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand 44 1
490 Yazd University Iran 44 1
491 Örebro University Sweden 44 1
492 KAIST South Korea 44 1
493 Bilkent University Turkey 44 1
494 Paris Diderot University France 44 1
495 Huawei China 44 1
496 MODUL University Vienna Austria 44 1
497 University of Lorraine France 44 1
498 University of Aberdeen United Kingdom 44 1
499 Goethe University, Frankfurt Germany 43 1
500 National Tsing HUa University Taiwan 43 1
501 Daimler Germany 43 1
502 University of Victoria Canada 43 1
503 Honda Motor Company Japan 43 1
504 Caen University France 43 1
505 University of Ioannina Greece 43 1
506 University of Windsor Canada 43 1
507 Imagination Technologies United Kingdom 43 1
508 University of Genoa Italy 42 1
509 Florida Institute of Technology United States 42 1
510 Technical University of Denmark Denmark 42 1
511 Fujian University of Technology China 42 1
512 University of Denver United States 42 1
513 Stellenbosch University South Africa 42 1
514 Artois University France 42 1
515 University of Ulster United Kingdom 42 1
516 University of Cologne Germany 42 1
517 University of Lincoln United Kingdom 42 1
518 Louisiana State University United States 41 1
519 University of Klagenfurt Austria 41 1
520 University of Newcastle Australia 41 1
521 ARM United Kingdom 41 1
522 IIT Madras India 41 1
523 National Chiao Tung University Taiwan 41 1
524 University of Coimbra Portugal 41 1
525 Pontifical Catholic University of Chile Chile 41 1
526 City University, London United Kingdom 41 1
527 Technical University of Lisbon Portugal 41 1
528 Budapest University of Technology and Economics Hungary 41 1
529 Drexel University United States 41 1
530 Lund University, Sweden Sweden 40 1
531 University of Paderborn Germany 40 1
532 University of Huddersfield United Kingdom 40 1
533 United Technologies Research Center United States 40 1
534 University of Sherbrooke Canada 40 1
535 Kansas State University United States 40 1
536 University of Munich Germany 40 1
537 Royal Holloway, University of London United Kingdom 40 1
Other rankings

There are two well-known rankings when it comes to Computer Science and Information Technology:

Times Higher Education

The THE ranking is an example of a complex ranking, as it includes a whole bunch of criteria. This complexity ultimately makes it difficult to understand the ranking. In addition, some of these criteria are arguable. For instance, there is a criterion that measures how many of the faculty members are from another country (more is better). This favors smaller countries who hire internationally (like Switzerland), and is unfair towards large countries (United States or China) but also to smaller countries like Israel, which are without doubt strong academically but nevertheless predominantly hire locals.

Another popular criterion is the professor-to-student ratio. While this ratio is certainly important, it cannot be measured easily because different academic cultures have different career paths, and this ratio mostly depends on what is actually counted. PhD students for instance will be counted as students even though they are usually heavily involved in teaching, so they can be seen as an asset towards improving the professor-to-student ratio.

But most importantly, I just do not agree with the results: Having two British universities ranked first and second feels like the "THE" ranking parameters have been tweaked until the desired result was achieved.

CSRankings

The CSRankings are versatile because one can choose research areas and time periods. So what's the problem here?

First, CSRankings does not include any citations. Citations are however a reasonably good tool to understand the impact of publications. Instead CSRankings chooses to simply count the number of publications. However, not just any publication (which would be silly), but only publications of hand-picked conferences. Decided by whom? Well, as far as I can tell, by the authors of CSRankings. There is no weighing at all, either a conference is "good" (and included) or not. Some areas seem over-represented, others are completely missing.

For instance, the area of Distributed/Parallel Computing is not present, and consequently the top conference in the area (PODC) is missing. One of the biggest awards in Computer Science is the Turing Award. After winning the award, Turing Award winners can choose a conference where they give a technical presentation, to be celebrated by their community, basically. Now, accidentally, I attended two PODC conferences where Turing Award winners presented their Turing Award speech: Amir Pnueli and Leslie Lamport. So how many of the included conferences can claim that they had a Turing Award speech, and how many had two?!?

There are many websites that rank conferences, for instance the CORE Conference Portal. Many conferences ranked in the highest category ("A*") are included in CSRankings, some not, and CSRankings also includes various conferences that are not ranked A*.

Also, why should conferences be either counted or not at all? Is for instance ICALP really that much worse than SODA? I would argue that the publishing venue is hardly a binary decision, often researchers choose to publish at the next conference, and not wait for the potentially "best" conference 11 months later. If a research result is valuable, it will be recognized even if it is published at a good but not stellar venue, since the a similar result may be published by somebody else in the meantime. Moreover, some conferences accept much more papers than others, which explains that some areas do much better than others.

There are lots of other issues when it comes to CSRankings, in particular its definition what/who should be considered Computer Science, which seems unnecessarily narrow.

Self-Critisism

Even though I believe that this ranking makes more sense than the competition, there are also many flaws and limitations:

Citations: The h-index is hardly a good measure for the quality of a researcher. It favors researchers who publish a lot, and work in areas with a "prolific" citation culture. Publishing a lot often goes hand in hand with having a little empire of a research group, to guarantee a constant output. Truly remarkable work is outstanding in many ways, and this can certainly no be measured by the h-index. If Einstein made 3 ground-breaking discoveries in his life, his h-index would be 3 still. Nevertheless, a high h-index somewhat accounts for working hard, with an output being somewhat respected, so it is not all wrong.

"40": That cut off at h-index 40 is totally arbitrary. Unfortunately nothing can be done here, as Guide2Research does not have any data below h-index 40, and Google is not willing to share its data. (Google: What is so valuable about this data that you cannot share it?)

Age: Everybody knows that the h-index inevitably grows with age (so it is really more an "age-index"). Not surprisingly the Guide2Research ranking is dominated by the elderly. Some of these highly decorated professors may have retired, or they may simply not be as active anymore. So this is hardly a good measure to decide for a university; universites are often thriving because of its young faculty members. In other words, the ranking really shows the best university "20 years ago", rather than today. On the other hand, universities often try to have a somewhat healthy age distribution, and having many highly cited older faculty members hopefully also means that many emerging young stars are there as well. Having a function of h-index and age would help here, but I don't have any age information. Moreover, the h-index 40 limit locks out young faculty anyway.

Size of faculty: One can see that the rating correlates heavily with the size of the faculty (with h-index above 40). Since I simply sum up the h-indexes, universities with a large faculty (e.g. Carnegie Mellon) have an advantage. However, that said, one can argue that studying at a university with a large faculty does have advantages, as this large faculty will offer a more diverse program than studying at a university with just five professors. One should however be careful about research organizations such as INRIA which are decentralized.

Sum: Well, just summing up those h-indexes is naive. An h-index of 100 is not just "twîce as good" as 50, but that's what summing up does. While I am considering to use a slightly different function (say, at least sum of squares), I also wanted to keep explanations simple. Suggestions are welcome!

Co-authors: This ranking is not influenced by how many co-authors the professors have, or in what order the co-authors are listed (alphabetical or in some cleverly elaborated order). Different research areas have different procedures here, but since the ranking is done for whole departments (and not individual researchers), I would argue it does not matter that much.

Sparse data: Further down the list the data becomes really shaky, as whole departments get their merits from that single professor who happens to have an h-index above 40. Already having a second h-high professor would advance the university dramatically. I would say that ranking makes sense for the top 50 universities, but I decided to include all data I have anyway.

Ranking in general: Ranking is wrong in so many ways, my only defense for doing this is that ranking universities is less wrong than ranking individuals (which is totally wrong). Also, I was challenged by the other rankings, and had an hour of time to kill (to do the ranking) and another hour to write this documentation.

Did I forget something? Where do you disagree? Please send me a mail with comments and suggestions.