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Unisa improves global ranking yet again

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Webometrics has published its mid-year update to the global ranking of universities in 2024.

In the first six months of 2024, Unisa moved from 797th to 736th in global rankings as evaluated by Webometrics, while maintaining the 7th position among South African universities.

Webometrics is the largest academic ranking of higher education institutions, offering every six months an independent, objective, free, open scientific exercise for providing reliable, multidimensional, updated and useful information about the performance of universities from all over the world

The ranking is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, which is part of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain. CSIC is attached to the Spanish Ministry of Education, and its main objective is to promote scientific research to improve the welfare of citizens.

Since 2004, the ranking has been published twice a year, covering more than 31 000 higher education institutions worldwide.

The research group says that the ranking is exclusively based on "link analysis for quality evaluation, as it is a far more powerful tool than citation analysis or global surveys. In the first case, bibliometrics only counts formal recognition between peers, while links not only includes bibliographic citations but also third parties’ involvement with university activities."

  • Visibility: The number of external networks (subnets) linking to the institution’s web pages ( weighted 50%)
  • Transparency or Openness: The number of citations from the Top 310 authors, excluding the top 30 outliers (10%)
  • Excellence: The number of papers amongst the top 10% most cited in each one of all 27 disciplines of the full database over the last five years (40%)

This ranking further enhances Unisa’s reputation as an international higher education brand to be reckoned with.

As the university continues to gain international recognition and endorsements, Unisa commits to persist in strengthening its efforts to reclaim its place at the top tier of tertiary education institutions in South Africa – and on the continent.

Click here to view all the South African rankings.

* Compiled by Philip van der Merwe, Editor, Department of Institutional Advancement

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Publish date: 2024/09/03

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