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Sejong University Ranked First in Korea for 2 Consecutive Years in the 2024 Leiden Ranking

2024.11.18 254

Sejong University ranked first in South Korea, which it has been for two consecutive years, in the 2024 Leiden Ranking, which evaluates universities in regards to the quality of their research papers. 

▲Picture of Sejong University 


The Leiden Ranking is a global university ranking that is published by Leiden University in the Netherlands, which is based on the proportion of top-cited papers among all research publications. The Leiden Ranking excludes non-research factors, such as the university size and reputation and instead solely focuses on their citation impact, which is unlike other university rankings, so it allows an objective assessment of a university’s research competence. 


The 2020 Leiden Ranking is for universities that published more than 800 internationally published papers each year for the past four years (2019~2022), and it analyzed 1,506 universities in 72 countries around the world. This ranking is based on the percentage of papers that are published by each university that are in the top 10% in regards to citations. A total of 51 domestic universities were included in the ranking. The number of papers published by Sejong University was 7,460, which 1,126 were in the top 10% in regards to citations. The percentage rose to 15.1% from 14.2% last year, which is an increase of 0.9%. Sejong University ranked 3rd in 2020, 2nd in 2021 and 2022, and 1st in Korea last year and this year. Sejong ranked 223rd in the global ranking, which it rose 93 steps from last year. It has shown remarkable growth in the world rankings for five consecutive years by ranking 592nd place in 2020, 473rd place in 2021, 394th place in 2022, and 316th place in 2023. Sejong also increased 9 places in the Asian ranking from last year to 30th place this year that followed 44th in 2022 and 39th in 2023, which lead to Sejong maintaining its position in the Asian Top 50 for three consecutive years.


The ranking evaluation of the Leiden Ranking is conducted using two methods that are varied by the weighting ratio of co-authors, which include the following. The fractional calculation method weights the contribution of co-authors that consider several factors, which include the papers by co-authors and the author’s institutions if the author belongs to several institutions, which use the Leiden Ranking criteria, and the full calculation, method which involves calculating equality without weighting.   


▲An Image of the Leiden Ranking Official Website  


Sejong University ranked first in Korea, which is according to the full calculation, and second according to the fractional calculation. Sejong University ranked first in this evaluation in the field of Life/Earth Science, which is one of five fields of the Leiden Ranking that provides ranking along with the overall ranking. Sejong University also ranked as follows. Sejong ranked 3rd  in Biology/Health Science, 2nd in Mathematics/Computer Science, 3rd in Natural Science/Engineering, and 2nd in Social Science/Humanities. These results illustrate that Sejong University has made continuous progress in every academic field. 


Sejong University secured its top position in Life/Earth Science in Korea for four consecutive years, and its global ranking rose 33rd, which increased by 31 positions from last year. Sejong is 10th in the Asian ranking and contuse to advance every year. 245 papers, which is 21.4%, were in the top 10% of the citation rates out of 1,144 papers. Sejong University is the only university in Korea that has achieved a citation rate of over 20% across all fields.    


In addition, Sejong University also has ranked 1st in Korea for five consecutive years from 2020 to 2023 according to the international joint paper ratio that is additionally published by the Leiden Ranking. The international joint paper ratio is related to the internationalization of the university. Internationalization is not just simply about having many foreign professors and students. It is about the enhancement of the reputation of the university and attracting excellent students from abroad. 


An official of Sejong University said, “Sejong University directly reflects both research competences and academic performance onto the faculty recruitment and evaluation, and it also supports the culture to focus on academic performance. Moreover, we have strengthened our supports for the research papers published in top-tier academic journals.” The official also added, “This type of research environment and the Sejong University policies have led to the acknowledgement of Sejong University in academic circles both domestically and globally and ultimately to joint research at the international level.”  


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