Interdisciplinary Science Rankings 2025: methodology

The inaugural Interdisciplinary Science Rankings will be published on 21 November.

Interdisciplinary scientific research holds the promise of unlocking lessons from multiple academic disciplines to solve global challenges. The Times Higher Education Interdisciplinary Science Rankings (ISR), launched in association with Schmidt Science Fellows, is the first effort of its kind to measure universities’ contributions and commitment to interdisciplinary science.

The ISR methodology consists of three pillars, each representing a stage in the life cycle of research projects: inputs, process and outputs. Each pillar is further divided into metrics to measure different aspects of that stage. There are 11 metrics in total.

The full methodology is published in the file at the bottom of this page.

Inputs: 19%

• Interdisciplinary science research funding: 8%
• Industry funding: 11%

The first metric is defined as the proportion of research income in science subjects devoted to interdisciplinary science research. The second metric is the amount of industry funding for science, normalised by the number of academic and research staff in science.

Process: 16%

• Measure of success: 4%
• Physical facilities: 4%
• Admin support: 4%
• Promotion process: 4%

The metrics in this pillar ask universities to provide evidence. We give credit for the evidence, and for the evidence being specific and publicly accessible.

We examine whether a university has measures of interdisciplinary success, provides specific physical facilities for interdisciplinary teams, provides specific administrative support for interdisciplinary teams, and has a tenure or promotion system in place that recognises interdisciplinary research.

Outputs: 65%

• Number of interdisciplinary science research publications: 10%
• Proportion of interdisciplinary science research publications: 5%
• Utility out of discipline: 5%
• Quality of interdisciplinary science research: 20%
• Reputation: 25%

The first two metrics are based on the number of interdisciplinary science research publications, but the first metric is normalised by the total number of science academic and research staff, while the second is normalised by the total number of science publications.

The following two metrics both examine citations of interdisciplinary science research. The third metric is a measure of how interdisciplinary a publication’s citations are. To determine this, we examine the relationship between any two publications where one cites the other. To gauge the cross-disciplinary influence of an entire institution, we calculate a score based on all science publications associated with that institution. This gives a sense of the institution's overall interdisciplinary impact through its research citations.

The fourth metric uses the 75th percentile of field-weighted citation impact for interdisciplinary science research publications – a very robust guide to how strong typical research is.

The final metric examines a university’s reputation for support for interdisciplinary teams, based on a survey of active researchers. The respondents were asked to name up to five institutions that are the best globally in terms of interdisciplinary science research.

Data sources

The first data set used is data collected directly from universities and institutions using our data collection system.  This data is submitted by approved and authorised representatives of the institution and is validated by THE.

Portal data for the ISR 2025 was collected at the same time as the data for the World University Rankings 2025. Universities were asked to submit data from either the financial year, calendar year or academic year that ended in 2022.

The data collected can be classified into two groups: quantitative data and evidence data.

We also draw on bibliometric data. This year, our bibliometric data supplier Elsevier provided us for examination more than 157 million citations to 18 million journal articles, conference proceedings, books and book chapters published over five years. The data include more than 30,000 active peer-reviewed journals indexed by Elsevier’s Scopus database and all indexed publications between 2019 and 2023. Citations to these publications made from 2019 to 2024 are also collected.

The survey of active researchers for the reputation metric was conducted in 2024. Universities that signed up to participate in the WUR/ISR data collection were asked to distribute the survey to their researchers. The questionnaire targeted scientists working in science disciplines, but it was not exclusively addressed to those engaged in interdisciplinary work.

To ensure that the result was globally representative, self-votes were discarded and the remaining votes were country-weighted against a benchmark.

Purchasing power parity rates and currency exchange rates were sourced from the World Bank and HMRC respectively. Data from the year 2022 were used in the ranking calculation.

Definitions

For the ISR 2025, we are using the following definition of interdisciplinary science.

Interdisciplinary science refers to the integration of the knowledge, traditions and processes from multiple scientific disciplines. It can involve multiple academics who collaborate with one another across different disciplines. It may also be a single academic approaching a scientific question across multiple disciplines.

In the ISR 2025, only science disciplines are covered, namely those that fit within the THE high-level subjects of computer science, engineering, life sciences and physical sciences. If a research project involves two or more science disciplines, it is considered interdisciplinary science.

However, if it involves only one science discipline then it is not considered interdisciplinary science research, even if it also involves one or more non-science disciplines. If research includes two topics that fall under only one of the four applicable subjects mentioned above, but they belong to two different subjects in THE’s more detailed 31-subject breakdown, it is also considered interdisciplinary.

As a result of feedback from universities that participated in round tables and stakeholder conversations with THE, from the ISR 2026 any research project including multiple scientific disciplines, or one or more scientific disciplines combined with one or more social science discipline, will be considered.

Inclusion criteria

For an institution to be ranked in the Interdisciplinary Science Rankings, it must satisfy all of the following criteria:

• Must submit data for the World University Rankings 2025.
• Must declare at least one science subject (computer science, engineering, life sciences and physical sciences) as applicable.
• Must publish at least 100 interdisciplinary science research academic publications within the five-year window 2019 to 2023.
• Must have at least 50 academic and research staff in total across the applicable science subjects. These staff members do not necessarily need to be engaged in interdisciplinary research.
• Must not have more than two missing metrics, once the metrics have been calculated for the rankings.
• Must not be in THE’s custom exclusion list. THE reserves the right to exclude any institution from our rankings, even if they satisfy all other inclusion criteria.

Universities that submitted data but did not meet the eligibility criteria for our table are included as reporter institutions. This means that they are listed, alphabetically, at the end of the rankings table, and rather than being assigned a rank number, they are instead labelled “reporter” institutions.

Rankings table

Precise overall scores are shown for the institutions ranked in the top 200 overall. Banded overall scores are presented for the institutions ranked in bands (for example, from 201 to 250). Precise individual pillar scores are displayed for each ranked institution.

For the institutions ranked 1-200 overall, an individual rank position is listed. The next institutions are assigned to the following bands: 201-250, 251-300, 301-350, 351-400, 401-500, 501-600, 601+.