The British company QS Quacquarelli Symonds has presented the QS University ranking – dedicated rating of the top universities in Emerging Europe and Central Asia.

The first place is taken by the Lomonosov Moscow State University. National Research Nuclear University “MEPhI” has shown great dynamic in this rating – it rose from 34th to the 22nd position, finishing the 3rd among the participants of the Project 5-100. In addition MEPhI was ranked the first according to the citation per article in Russia.

“Many Russian participants show steady progress in the rating”, – said Zoya Zaitseva, a regional Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at QS. “A number of factors can be the reason for this. One of them is the project 5-100. The Ministry of Education and Science of Russia has chosen a group of 15 universities and started work on improving their international competitiveness. 11 of 15 universities have shown improvement in their positions. All these results clearly indicate the efforts of universities to achieve success”.

In the presented ranking the best universities of the region were determined on the basis of nine criteria:

• academic reputation (30%; calculated on the basis of a survey of international academics);
• reputation among employers (20%; calculated on the basis of a survey of international employers);
• ratio of teaching staff and students (15%; data from universities and public sources);
• proportion of foreign faculty (2,5%; data from universities and public sources);
• share of foreign students (2,5%; data from universities and public sources);
• publication activity of teaching staff (10%; number of published articles per one teacher, calculated using data from Scopus/Elsevier);
• citation of scientific publications (5%; the number of citations per article, based on data supplied by Scopus/Elsevier);
• proportion of employees with a degree (5%; data from universities and public sources);
• effectiveness of Internet resources (10%, data of the Webometrics ranking).