From a total of 55 academic subjects included in the Shanghai Ranking, Masaryk University has achieved success in 13 disciplines. It is ranked in the TOP 200 in the categories of Environmental Science & Engineering and Geography, where it is also the first institution in the Czech Republic in the field of Biotechnology. MU is the only institution from the Czech Republic to be listed in the subject of Biotechnology, ranking 401-500 in this category.
The Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) by Shangai Ranking, which also publishes the ARWU, assesses the academic performance of universities in 55 academic subjects. To be included in the rankings, an institution must have sufficient publication activity in a given subject area. Shanghai Ranking then produces a separate ranking for each subject group, based on an assessment of five quantitative indicators, and publishes a limited number of institutions with the best scores on its website. The ranking parameters include citation rates, publication activity in prestigious journals, level of international collaboration and prestigious awards won in the field.
“International comparative rankings are becoming increasingly well known, and not just among experts. They put universities under scrutiny and the public has a better idea of their quality and performance. In this respect, it is very gratifying to find out that we are the best in the Czech Republic in three academic subjects and among the top 200 universities in the world in two of them. The success of our university is due to the ever-increasing quality of our research, which benefits from international cooperation, and undoubtedly also to our internal budget policy, which focuses on the quality of publications, citations and the amount of grants received,” said Martin Bareš, Rector of Masaryk University.
In 2023, more than 5,000 institutions from 104 countries were evaluated and more than 1,900 institutions made it into the rankings. By appearing in 13 out of 55 subject rankings, MU has improved its overall position compared to last year, when it was listed in two fewer subjects.
In the Environmental Science & Engineering category, out of 500 institutions, Masaryk University was ranked 151-200 and is the first among Czech universities, making this its best result. MU also achieved the same ranking both nationally and globally in the Geography category, where 300 institutions are ranked. Masaryk University achieved high scores in both categories mainly due to international cooperation, i.e. the indicator of the number of publications with international co-authors, as well as publications in prestigious journals and an above-average citation rate of publications according to the InCites database.
Masaryk University shares another first place in the Czech environment with Charles University in the categories of Law (positions 201-300), Political Sciences (positions 301-400) and Psychology (positions 401-500).
A total of 11 Czech universities were ranked in the Shanghai Ranking, including Charles University in 20 categories, the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague in 7 categories, Palacký University Olomouc and the University of South Bohemia in 5 categories, as well as Brno University of Technology, Czech Technical University in Prague, Mendel University, Technical University of Liberec, University of Veterinary Sciences Brno and University of Chemistry and Technology Prague.