In the ranking carried out annually by the Chinese university, the Universitat de València has improved in HiCi (Highly Cited Researchers) and in number of publications. In HiCi, it ranks third in Spain in terms of highly cited researchers (only behind the Universitat de Barcelona and the University of Granada). In terms of publications, it is also third (behind only the Universitat de Barcelona and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona).

Only one Spanish university, the Universitat de Barcelona, is ranked 101st to 200th in the world. After that, only four Spanish universities rank between 201 and 300: the Universitat de València, the Complutense University, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the University of Granada.

The global list is headed by Harvard, Stanford, Massachusetts MIT and Cambridge. The Shanghai ranking is the colloquial name for the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the most widely recognised international ranking.

Shanghai uses indicators that focus on the research performance of institutions to score different higher education institutions. Thus, it assesses Nobel Prize or Fields Medal winning faculty or students, highly cited research staff in 21 subjects categories articles published in the journals ‘Nature’ and ‘Science’, articles indexed in the Social Science Citation Index and the Science Citation Index-Expanded in the previous year, the academic performance per capita of an institution (weighted result of the five indicators above divided by the number of full-time equivalent academic staff)...

Given the results, the Vice-Principal for Research, Carlos Hermenegildo, pointed out that this significant improvement in positions in Shanghai, a ranking that is based mainly on research performance indicators, “demonstrates the strength and commitment of the researchers at the Universitat de València”. The Vice-Principal considers that in such a complicated context in terms of funding and management of human resources in research, “being the third Spanish university in terms of both highly cited authors and publications, as well as leaders in the Valencian Community, can only be achieved because we have a human capital that values its work and a university capable of providing the technological and management resources so that they can carry it out as effectively as they do”.