Veterinary Sciences: The University of Ghent in Belgium Continues to Top the Shanghai Ranking

The 2018 edition of the Shanghai Ranking by academic discipline (54 in total) has just been released. The rankings, compiled annually since 2003, highlight the world’s top universities, evaluated based on six criteria related to research performance. This year, in veterinary science, Belgium remains at the top of the rankings, ahead of the universities of California and Copenhagen.   With the University of Ghent, Belgium continues to dominate the Shanghai Ranking in veterinary sciences. This year, it leads the podium ahead of the University of California, Davis (California, U.S.), in second place, and the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), in third. Last year, it was already in first place, ahead of the University of Utrecht (Netherlands) and the Royal Veterinary College (United Kingdom). The Alfort Veterinary School, ranked 49th last year, has fallen significantly and now ranks among the top 76–100. The National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse ranks ahead of it, in the top 51–75 group. France, which was absent from the thematic podium in 2017, makes its debut this year with research in ecology conducted by the University of Montpellier: ranked first, it dethrones the University of Oxford. In the 2018 rankings, the United States confirms its dominance by holding the top spot in 35 out of 54 research fields. China continues to make progress, with nine universities ranked at the top. The Netherlands still holds third place, although it has slipped slightly, with three top-three finishes instead of five last year. Each year, more than 1,200 universities worldwide are ranked by the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), which publishes a list of the top 500. Several objective indicators are used in the Shanghai ranking: the number of research articles published, cited, or indexed in international journals; the number of researchers cited in these publications; the number of Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals awarded, etc. According to Martin Enserink of the journal *Science* , “France’s poor performance in the Shanghai Ranking sparked a national debate on higher education that led to a new law granting universities greater autonomy.”