QS University Rankings: Latin America

The 2016 edition of the Latin American rankings includes significant
methodological improvements. The original spirit of this initiative, which was to measure universities according to their ability to meet unique challenges, has not changed.

Methodology

The regional ranking uses five basic criteria: research impact and productivity, teaching commitment, employability, web impact and, for the first time in 2016, internationalization. The method retains key indicators of the global ranking, such as Academic Reputation, Employer Reputation, and Faculty/Student Ratio, though each has a different weighting in this regional study.

The methodology differs somewhat from that used for either the QS World University Rankings® or the QS University Rankings: Asia, based on feedback collected from the region, the expert assessment of important factors in the region and the availability of data.

The research excellence element, that exist in all of our regional rankings, is based on data from Scopus, the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed academic literature.

Note

One key input for the development of this methodology has been the responses gathered from a survey of academics and institutional representatives in 2011. However, the final methodology slightly diverged from the initially intended approach. Part of this has come from a constructive relationship with Cybermetrics Labs enabling us to access data from the Ranking Web of World Universities, but the other influence has been the availability of data. The international indicators, in particular, have been hard work to gather data for at the levels we had hoped and would have needed to justify their inclusion. This is a work in progress and something planned for reintroduction in the future.

Indicators

Academic Reputation (30%)

Employer Reputation (20%)

Student to Faculty Ratio (10%)

Faculty Staff with PhD (10%)

Citations per Paper (10%)

Papers per Faculty (5%)

NEW! International Research Network (10%)

Web Impact (5%)

2016/17 Results

The 2016 QS UNiversity Rankings: Latin America results can be found on www.topuniversities.com

Methodology Refinements in 2016

Extension to 5 years of the period considered in the reputation surveys
Five years of responses are now aggregated for both the academic and employer reputation indicators, and not only three, as in previous years. The three most recent years are considered at 100%, while the oldest ones are weighted at 25% and 50%, respectively. This change provides even more stability for the results.
Normalization of papers and citations indexed by Scopus
In previous years, those institutions with strong focus in Life Sciences & Medicine and, to a lesser extent,
Natural Sciences, had an advantage in terms of research output and impact. Since 2015, QS has adopted an approach to normalize publication and citation data across the five considered faculty areas (Arts & Humanities, Engineering & Technology, Life Sciences & Medicine, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences & Management).

A technical explanation can be found here.
Exclusion of papers with a high number of affiliations
A new affiliation cap has been applied, excluding any paper with more than a given number of affiliations. This variable cap is calculated individually for each subject, excluding all papers for which the number of affiliated institutions cited in a paper is higher than the one cited by 99.9% of all research in the given field. The proportion of excluded papers is 0.1% globally.

2016 Badges

If your university has been ranked in this year’s edition of the QS University Rankings: Latin America, you can also download the badges for your marketing materials here.

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