English, Chemistry, Physics, Life sciences: UoH departments occupy top slot in World University Subject Rankings

Hyderabad: University of Hyderabad (UoH) continues to occupy the top slots in QS World University Subject Rankings 2022 released recently.

This year's ranking analyzed and published Rankings for 51 subjects from 1,543 universities across 161 locations around the world. Every university included in this year's rankings is assessed based on five indicators: Reputation among academics, Reputation among global employers, the number of Research Citations the university achieves per paper in that subject, the 'H-index', which measures the productivity and impact of each published scholar of the University, and International Research Network (IRN) which is a measure of the efficiency of establishing stable research collaborations in every of our 5 broad subject areas. It is introduced in the rankings by broad subject area only.

Department of English is in 301-320 rank. It remains the top-ranked subject in UoH for the second consecutive year.

Chemistry is in the 401-450 rank. Closely following them are the Life Sciences at 551-600 and Physics at 601-610.

All of these academic units in UoH have produced highly-cited work with faculty publishing in top-ranked journals.

UoH also featured in 36 subjects out of 51 narrow subjects under 5 broad subject areas viz. Arts & Humanities, Engineering & Technology, Life Sciences & Medicine, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences & Management in the ranking.

The varsity's IoE aim is to be among the top 500 World Universities.

"I am delighted to see that two of our disciplines, English and Chemistry, have already met the IoE mandate of entering the top 500 ranks. The Life Sciences and Physics are not far behind. Yes, we have slid down in these disciplines from 2021, and that is a matter of some concern. We need to ensure better publications from faculty/researchers to ensure an upward movement in the rankings, and we will take some tough measures to meet this requirement. As I see it, it is not the number of publications, but the place of publication that matters, so any and every publication cannot be counted," said Prof BJ Rao, Vice-Chancellor, UoH.

He also added that UoH has also instituted a "zero-tolerance to plagiarism" policy which I see as a step in the right direction for quality control. A second concern is the complete absence of several disciplines, particularly in the Social Sciences, from global visibility and ranking – and we again have to institute some hard measures to ensure this.

Congratulating all four disciplines, and English and Chemistry, in particular, Prof Rao said, these rankings enable our students too in multiple ways because as beneficiaries of education at the hands of the best researchers will strengthen their foundations.