The Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings have provided university performance data since 2004. The 2026 THE Ranking includes 2191 of what THE describes as the "best" universities across 115 countries and territories. While the THE Ranking methodology is available to read online, the data is a mixture of survey data carried out by THE themselves, and publication metadata from Elsevier's Scopus (a proprietary database).
The THE Ranking methodology outlines various measures, including normalizing for institution size and research discipline, that it takes to ensure a fairer benchmarking.
The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Ranking is another major university ranking system which uses Elsevier data. There are many variations of this ranking, including rankings by continent, by subject, and even by student city! The 2026 QS World University Ranking includes over 1500 institutions across over 100 countries.
Similar to the THE Ranking, the QS Ranking takes multiple variables across research and teaching into account. Data for the QS Ranking Methodology is submitted by University's themselves as well as taken from Elsevier. The QS Ranking Methodology explains the considerations taken for each indicator, for example it details how Citations Per Faculty, is calculated to take institution size into consideration.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was first published in 2003 by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, but has been copyrighted and published by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, a fully independent organization, since 2009. Much like THE and QS it is updated annually. Over 2500 universities are ranked with only the top 1000 published.
The ARWU Methodology provides some information regarding the ranking criteria, weighting, and indicator definitions. The various data sources are also outlined; ARWU uses Clarivate data such as the Highly Cited Researchers List, alongside data about the number of Noble Prize Laureates and Field Medalists at an institution.
Chief of the concerns regarding institutional rankings (particularly the big three mentioned above), is that they are produced by for-profit companies which "offer fee-based solutions to pay for the rankings and help universities improve their rankings" and that their metrics are not transparent (Pagell, 2024).
With the latest update published in October 2025, the CWTS Leiden Ranking Open Edition is the only entirely transparent ranking system of over 2800 universities worldwide. Using data from OpenAlex, and with extensive documentation about the methodology, CWTS aims to allow for the transparent comparison of research institutions across a wide variety of metrics.
Alongside the Ranking, CWTS Leiden provides responsible use guidelines for not only their own institutional ranking but for ALL institutional rankings.
IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence is an "international institutional non-profit association of ranking organizations, universities and other bodies interested in university rankings and academic excellence". (About IREG, n.d.).