World University Rankings 2021 by subject: clinical and health methodology

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 clinical and health subject ranking includes a range of narrower subject areas.

The subjects used to create this ranking are:

• Medicine and dentistry
• Other health

Different weights and measures

The subject tables employ the same range of 13 performance indicators used in the overall World University Rankings 2021, brought together with scores provided under five categories.

However, the overall methodology is carefully recalibrated for each subject, with the weightings changed to suit the individual fields.

The weightings for the clinical and health ranking are:

• Teaching: the learning environment
  27.5 per cent
• Research: volume, income and reputation
  27.5 per cent
• Citations: research influence
  35 per cent
• International outlook: staff, students and research
  7.5 per cent
• Industry income: innovation
  2.5 per cent

Criteria

Two criteria determine eligibility for the THE subject rankings: a publication threshold by discipline and an academic staff* threshold by discipline.

No institution can be included in the overall World University Rankings unless it has published at least 1,000 relevant publications over the five years that we examine.

For the 11 subject tables, the publication thresholds are set differently. For clinical, pre-clinical and health, the threshold drops to 500 papers published in this discipline over the past five years.

There is also an academic staff eligibility criterion. Prior to the 2019 subject rankings, an institution had to have at least 5 per cent of its academic staff working in the clinical, pre-clinical and health discipline to be included in the subject table.

Since the 2019 subject rankings, we have made a small adjustment in the staff eligibility criterion. An institution needs to have either a minimum proportion of its staff or a minimum number of staff in this discipline to be included in the subject ranking.

For clinical and health, an institution must have at least 5 per cent of its academic staff or at least 50 academic staff members in the discipline.

*Academic staff is defined as the full-time equivalent number of staff employed in an academic post, eg, lecturer, reader, professor.