The Hebrew University is a leader in Israel in citing scientific articles by its researchers

This is according to a new ISI ranking

Scientists at the Hebrew University (Photo: Yoram Ashheim).
The Hebrew University is ranked at the top of higher education institutions in Israel in terms of the number of citations received by scientific articles of its faculty members. The number of citations of a researcher's scientific articles is a key indicator of the importance of his academic work.

ISI Web of Knowledge from the Thompson Group provides tools and knowledge for citation analysis of scientific articles. This company conducted a comprehensive ranking regarding key scientific indicators of universities around the world, which included 11 years of scientific publications starting from January 1995 to December 2005. The findings of the recently published ranking show that the Hebrew University was ranked the highest in Israel in terms of the number of citations of scientific articles by its faculty members – A total of 242,888 citations.

In the division into fields of knowledge, the Hebrew University was ranked first or second in Israel in 17 out of 20 fields examined. The nine fields in which the Hebrew University ranked first are: chemistry, neuroscience and behavior, plant and animal sciences, microbiology, pharmacology and toxicology, earth sciences, social sciences, environmental sciences/ecology and agricultural sciences.

Among the 3,328 higher education institutions examined, the Hebrew University was ranked 109th in the world, followed by Tel Aviv University in 114th place; Weizmann Institute of Science in 123rd place; The Technion is in 244th place; Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 411th place; Bar-Ilan University is in 553rd place.

The fields of research in which the Hebrew University was ranked high in the world ranking were: Mathematics - 35th place; Agricultural Sciences - 48th place; Pharmacy and toxicology - 54th place; Chemistry - the 61st place.

According to the president of the Hebrew University, Prof. Menachem Magidor, "these findings are another indication that the Hebrew University is located among the leading higher education institutions in the world."

Recently, the Hebrew University was also ranked among the best universities in the world, in a comprehensive survey conducted by The London Times Higher Education Supplement. This ranking places the Hebrew University at the top of the list far from any Israeli university. The Times ranked the Hebrew University in 77th place out of the 200 best universities in the world.

The Times ranking was based on a scale of variables including: academic faculty evaluations, number of academic publications by faculty members, citation of academic articles they wrote, the ratio between the number of faculty members and the number of students, as well as a survey conducted among global companies that recruit university graduates.