Private universities, including Galgotias University and Amity University, have scored higher than the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), one of India’s foremost research institutions, on the “research quality” parameter of the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings released on Wednesday, raising questions over the soundness of the ranking methodology.
After defending their methodology for the last two years, they have finally announced some minor changes to the methodology from next year,” said Achal Agrawal, founder of India Research Watch, which regularly flags research misconduct in India. India’s research community has criticised the results, particularly over the extent to which citation-based metrics reflect the quality and integrity of research. Galgotias’s position on the research-quality indicator has drawn attention amid questions over its research credentials. The university apologised for the episode, attributing it to a staff member who was unaware of the product’s origins. The citation-impact indicator measures the average number of times an institution’s published research is cited by scholars globally, with the data normalised to account for differences in citation patterns across disciplines. THE plans to recalibrate its research-quality metrics by reducing the weight of citation impact and increasing the weight of research strength, research excellence and research influence. THE’s World University Rankings assess institutions across teaching, research environment, research quality, international outlook and industry. The remaining weight is assigned to international outlook and industry.
Research quality accounts for 30% of the overall ranking, making it the most heavily weighted of THE’s five performance pillars. The 23rd edition of the UK-based ranking covers 2,297 universities across 118 countries and territories. Institutions are assessed on 17 performance indicators across five broad areas: teaching, research environment, research quality, international outlook and industry impact. “The Research Quality parameter of THE rankings has been called out for the absurd results since 2024. In February 2026, the university was asked to withdraw from the India AI Impact Summit at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi after it was found displaying a commercially available, Chinese-manufactured robotic dog as a product developed at its own centre of excellence. THE’s research-quality pillar comprises four indicators: citation impact (15%) and research strength, research excellence and research influence, each carrying 5%. THE has acknowledged vulnerabilities in the methodology and announced changes planned for the 2028 edition, scheduled for publication in autumn 2027. In a statement on September 30, Phil Baty, THE’s global affairs officer, said the revisions would include a cap on institutional self-citations and changes to the research-quality metrics to reduce the influence of citation impact. The research environment pillar accounts for 29% of the overall score, while teaching accounts for 29.5%.
Baty said the citation-impact measure, despite being widely used by THE for more than a decade, could be skewed by statistical outliers at institutions with lower publication volumes and was vulnerable to active manipulation.
