Two Australian universities appear in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings' top 50, published on 6 October.
The University of Melbourne is Australia’s highest ranked university, coming in at number 37 globally, the same as last year.
The result means Melbourne is the highest placed Australian university in three of the four major world rankings.
“I would like to acknowledge the work of all our teaching staff and researchers who made this outstanding result possible,’’ said Glyn Davis, the vice-chancellor.
The Australian National University was ranked second in Australia, just one place behind Melbourne at 38 globally.
Two other Australian institutions appeared in the global top 100: the University of Sydney at 58 and the University of Queensland, 74.
The THE rankings said of Queensland university, “Few universities can boast either their own coral-island marine studies centre or an experimental mine for mineral research–but Queensland can.”
The rankings measure performance in teaching, research, citations, industry income and international outlook.
Anne Mroz, THE editor, said this year’s rankings methodology had employed a new indicator that enhanced its international outlook category.
The category takes into account the proportion of international staff and students and the proportion of research papers that are co-authored with at least one international partner.
Another change this year is the introduction of subject normalisation for a wider range of performance indicators, giving greater parity to the arts, humanities and social sciences.