In its press release on 31 August, the National University of Singapore (NUS) announced that NUS had been placed 11th in the inaugural Reuters Top 75 – the Asia’s Most Innovative Universities ranking.
Outside of Northeast Asia on the list, NUS is the highest ranked educational institution and is also the only Singapore university to be placed among the list’s top 15 universities.
This prestigious list recognises Asian universities for their outstanding commitment to research, innovation and the protection of ideas, as well as the commercialisation of those discoveries.
Using data from the Intellectual Property (IP) & Science division of Thomson Reuters, the Reuters Top 75 ranking analyses scientific literature and patent data across ten criteria from 2009 to 2014 to determine which Asian academic institutions are the most innovative.
The factors considered in the ranking are academic papers, patent filings and commercialising its discoveries.
NUS President Professor Tan Chorh Chuan said, “At NUS, we place a strong emphasis on pioneering innovations and enhancing the translational impact of our research for the benefit of Singapore and beyond. To be named as the 11th most innovative university in Asia by the inaugural Reuters Top 75 is a strong endorsement of NUS as a research powerhouse and a centre of innovation in Asia. This achievement is also a recognition of the dedication and commitment of NUS’ talented faculty members, researchers, staff and students, who work tirelessly to achieve research excellence and pursue its innovative application.”
Nus was honored as the first university from Singapore to break into the world’s Top 100 universities in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), compiled by the independent Shanghai Ranking Consultancy earlier this month. This newest accomplishment is the latest feather in the cap for NUS.
NUS has also recently been named Asia’s top university in the Asia University Rankings 2016 published by Times Higher Education magazine and the Quacquarelli Symonds University Rankings: Asia 2016 in June this year.
Reuters Top 75: Asia’s Most Innovative Universities
Reuters Top 75: Asia’s Most Innovative Universities is a list that identifies the educational institutions that are doing the most to advance science, invent new technologies, and help drive the global economy.
To compile this ranking, the IP & Science division of Thomson Reuters began by identifying more than 600 global organisations – including educational institutions, nonprofit charities and government-funded labs – that publish the most academic research.
The list was screened further by evaluating each candidate on ten different metrics so that the list only included universities located in the Asia Pacific region. About 150 Asian academic and government organisations were ranked based on their performance.
Organisations are evaluated on:
- Patent volume
- Patent success
- Global patents
- Patent citations
- Patent citation impact
- Percent of patents cited
- Patent to article citation impact
- Industry article citation impact
- Percent of industry collaborative articles
- Total Web of Science Core Collection papers
These criteria contribute to the composite score, which in turn determined the ranking of the universities according to innovative capacity and achievement.