(cm) Worldwide at place 27 and in Europe at place 5 – these are the results for ETH Zurich in a compilation from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which ranks 500 universities for the second consecutive year (1)(2). This means that ETH has held on to its ranking in Europe but slipped two places in universities worldwide.

The global ranking leader, based nearly solely on prizes and citations, is Harvard University in Boston ahead of Stanford University in Palo Alto. Four British universities, led by the University of Cambridge, figure ahead of ETH Zurich in the European ranking. The University of Zurich is at place 13 in Europe and 57 in the world ranking. A further Swiss University that managed to get in to the first 100 is the University of Basle at place 91 worldwide and 31 in Europe.

This year's ranking cannot be squarely compared with last year's, as a few modifications were made to the criteria. This year, in addition to Nobel Laureates, winners of the Fields Medal in Mathematics were also taken into account.

This time around, as a measure of teaching, the Chinese researchers also included the number of alumni or staff who were awarded prizes. The weighting of some criteria was also revised.

Doubts as to the results of the ranking – especially that of ETH Zurich – could arise when one looks more closely at the sources of the data used in the study. If one looks for widely cited researchers according to institution, ETH turns out to be a complex entity. First, there is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, six different versions for ETH Hönggerberg, and three versions of ETH Zurich and the ETH Zentrum. This makes it very difficult to ascertain just who the "highly cited" ETH researchers are. Accordingly for "ETH Hoenggerberg" it's Hans Rudolf Ott, for "ETH Honggerberg", Maurice T. Rice and Willi Gujer, Ari Helenius and Kurt Wüthrich for "ETH Hönggerberg“. It would appear that the most-cited author of the "Swiss Federal Institute of Technology“ is Michael Grätzel, who works at ETH Lausanne, the French-speaking sister institution of ETH Zurich and naturally, a different university.