For the eighth year in a row, the compilers of the Leiden Ranking do things just a bit differently from other rankings. Instead of coming up with a single winner, they invite their readership to discover which educational institutions score highest by applying different kinds of data and criteria.

They leave aside the universities’ reputations and teaching quality. Instead, they put the emphasis on a university’s scientific impact. The compilers measure this by looking at the number of times a scientific article has been cited in other articles. Two other metrics are the number of articles published by female authors and the number of open access publications.

In most areas, Wageningen University & Research (WUR), Utrecht University (UU), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) and the University of Groningen (UG) lead the pack of Dutch universities.

Open access

According to the Leiden Ranking, the University of Groningen is number one worldwide when it comes to open access. In the reporting years 2018-2021, a staggering 95 percent of the university’s publications were freely accessible. In last year’s ranking this was just under 88 percent. According to the university itself, the steady growth can mostly be attributed to new rules. In this area, TU/e's percentage is just over 81. Universities in Iran and India have the highest percentage of non-public publications.

Impact

VU Amsterdam does really well in terms of scientific impact. 7.9 percent of its publications rank among the most-cited 5 percent in the world. UU and WUR are tied for second place, with 7.8 percent, TU/e comes out at 6.4 percent.

Universities can also be ranked according to the percentage of articles that are world-leading, i.e. that are in the top 1 percent of most-cited articles. If this criterion is applied for Dutch universities, WUR tops the table (1.9 percent), followed by UU (1.8 percent) and VU Amsterdam (1.7 percent). Here TU/e scores 1.3 percent, which is equal to the scores of TU Delft and the University of Twente.

Gender

The ranking also allows you to look at the number of publications by female and male authors. In the Netherlands, female scholars are in the minority. VU Amsterdam scores highest on female authorship with 42.9 percent. It is followed closely by Erasmus University Rotterdam with 42 percent, while Delft University of Technology scores lowest with a mere 18.7 percent. TU/e does slightly better at 20.1 percent.

It’s worth noting that of the 1,411 universities ranked worldwide, only 27 have more female-authored than male-authored publications. With 63.1 percent, Oslo Metropolitan University (Norway) has the highest share of female writers.

Collaboration

When it comes to academic collaboration, VU Amsterdam does well for a Dutch university. 92.4 percent of its publications were written collaboratively with other universities or organisations. Not a single Dutch university ranked under 80 percent in this respect, with Delft University of Technology bringing up the rear – as it did last year – with 81.9 percent. Again, TU/e does slightly better with 84.1 percent, although meanwhile having to watch how all other Dutch institutions rank higher.