International rankings

The international rankings are published continuously throughout the year. The overview of SDU's rankings will be updated when the results are made public.

Below, you will find the achievements in the rankings that SDU actively follows.

Rankings refer to an international evaluative practice that measures the performance of universities on a number of criteria or metrics.

The participating universities are awarded points according to how well they meet these metrics. The universities are then placed on a ranking list according to their point score.

Rankings can therefore in many ways be described as an international tool for comparing higher education institutions.

The ranking of universities was originally created to measure research quality. Today, the various rankings encompass a much broader focus, including research and educational quality, organisational aspects and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and sustainable transition.

The ranking task is usually handled by international companies, and many of the more classic rankings are rooted in research journals or databases. However, there are also other ranking actors, such as the universities themselves.

There are thus many other types of rankings and ranking agencies, each with their own origin, focus area and associated methods for ranking universities.

In simple terms, there are three types of international rankings:

• Purpose-based rankings.
• Academic rankings.
• Wide-ranging rankings.

The purpose-based rankings are concerned with specific objectives, such as rankings aimed at sustainability as a theme.

The academic rankings typically have a predominant bibliometric dimension. This is expressed by the fact that a large part of the underlying data is extracted from databases concerning research articles.

Wide-ranging rankings typically use various data sources. In addition to international register data, they include information that the universities are asked to report. Among other things, ranking agencies also conduct reputation surveys among researchers, graduates and the universities' collaborative partners. In general, it is important to keep an eye on how the different rankings weight the individual indicators. This affects the total number of credits awarded to a university. Over time, there are also changes in methods and operationalisations, and universities may vary in how adequately these changes are reflected in the calculations.

It is important to keep in mind that ranking is not a perspective that can stand alone. Rankings can make us curious about differences between universities based on a learning approach, but a number on a ranking indicator or a weighted ranking can never stand alone. The universities operate under very different framework conditions, and their activities can vary significantly in structure. The rankings may not necessarily reflect this fairly in relation to the context of a specific university. It is always recommended to consider the overall trends over time and across the different types of rankings to get a sense of the development of universities.