03 · What You Need to Know
QS and THE Are Different Ranking Models, Not Competing Versions of One Formula
Start With the Overall Structure
The current QS World University Rankings methodology groups indicators into five lenses: Research and Discovery, Employability and Outcomes, Learning Experience, Global Engagement, and Sustainability.
Research and Discovery carries 50% of the overall QS score. Employability and Outcomes contributes 20%, Learning Experience 10%, Global Engagement 15%, and Sustainability 5%.
THE's World University Rankings 2026 uses five pillars: Teaching, Research Environment, Research Quality, International Outlook, and Industry. Teaching contributes 29.5%, Research Environment 29%, Research Quality 30%, International Outlook 7.5%, and Industry 4%.
The structures immediately show why direct indicator-by-indicator comparison can be misleading. The categories themselves are organized differently.
QS Concentrates Half of Its Score in Research and Discovery
QS's Research and Discovery lens consists of two indicators. Academic Reputation contributes 30% to the overall ranking, and Citations per Faculty contributes 20%.
Academic Reputation is based on QS's Academic Survey, in which academic experts nominate institutions they regard as demonstrating academic excellence within relevant subject areas.
Citations per Faculty measures citation volume relative to the institution's faculty size, with methodological procedures intended to make comparisons fairer across different disciplinary profiles.
Research also appears in QS's Global Engagement lens through International Research Network, weighted at 5%.
THE Separates the Research Environment From Research Quality
THE's methodology distinguishes the environment supporting research from the performance of the research itself.
Research Environment contributes 29%. It contains Research Reputation at 18%, Research Income at 5.5%, and Research Productivity at 5.5%.
Research Quality contributes another 30%. It contains Citation Impact at 15%, Research Strength at 5%, Research Excellence at 5%, and Research Influence at 5%.
This produces a more disaggregated research model than QS's two-indicator Research and Discovery lens.
The Current Research Indicators Look Like This
| Research dimension |
QS World University Rankings |
THE World University Rankings 2026 |
| Research or academic reputation |
Academic Reputation: 30% |
Research Reputation: 18% |
| Citation-based performance |
Citations per Faculty: 20% |
Citation Impact: 15% |
| Research strength |
No directly equivalent standalone indicator |
Research Strength: 5% |
| Research excellence |
No directly equivalent standalone indicator |
Research Excellence: 5% |
| Research influence |
No directly equivalent standalone indicator |
Research Influence: 5% |
| Research productivity |
No directly equivalent standalone flagship indicator |
Research Productivity: 5.5% |
| Research income |
No directly equivalent direct flagship indicator |
Research Income: 5.5% |
| International research |
International Research Network: 5% |
International Collaboration: 2.5% |
These weights are time-sensitive. They describe the methodologies currently published by QS and THE and should be rechecked whenever a new ranking edition or methodological revision is released.
QS Academic Reputation and THE Research Reputation Are Not the Same Indicator
Both organizations survey academics, but the resulting indicators belong to different methodologies.
QS Academic Reputation carries 30% of the overall ranking. QS describes it as measuring academic excellence based on nominations from academic experts within their subject areas.
THE Research Reputation carries 18%. THE uses its Academic Reputation Survey to identify universities regarded by scholars as excellent in research.
Even when two indicators seem conceptually similar, differences in survey design, respondent populations, processing, disciplinary balancing, time periods, and scoring can produce different institutional results.
A university should therefore not assume that improving “academic reputation” will affect both rankings identically.
QS Uses Citations per Faculty
QS's Citations per Faculty indicator carries 20% of the overall score. QS divides citation counts by the number of faculty members, thereby expressing citation performance relative to institutional academic staff size.
This means size matters to the calculation. Two universities with the same total citation count can perform differently if their faculty denominators differ.
QS also applies procedures intended to address disciplinary differences because citation practices vary considerably among fields.
THE Uses Four Separate Research Quality Measures
THE's Research Quality pillar is broader than a single citation average.
Citation Impact contributes 15% and captures average citation performance with field normalization and other methodological adjustments.
Research Strength contributes 5% and uses the 75th percentile of field-weighted citation impact, which THE describes as an indicator of the strength of typical research.
Research Excellence contributes 5% and examines publications among the world's top 10% by field-weighted citation impact, normalized by year, subject, and staff numbers.
Research Influence contributes 5% and uses an iterative approach that considers not merely how often research is cited but also the influence of the papers providing those citations.
This means two institutions with similar average citation performance may still differ on the other research-quality measures.
THE Directly Measures Research Productivity
THE's Research Productivity indicator contributes 5.5%. It counts publications in academic journals indexed by Scopus per scholar, scales for institutional size, and normalizes for subject.
The current flagship QS methodology does not include a directly equivalent standalone publication-productivity indicator.
Publication volume can still influence QS because publications generate the citation pool underlying Citations per Faculty, but the mathematical relationship is different.
THE Directly Measures Research Income
THE assigns 5.5% to Research Income. The measure is scaled against academic staff, adjusted for purchasing-power parity, and normalized according to subject profile.
THE explicitly acknowledges that this is a controversial indicator because national economic circumstances and research-funding policies differ, while arguing that research income is important to developing research capability and is often awarded competitively.
QS's flagship ranking currently has no direct equivalent research-income indicator.
This can matter substantially for universities operating in different national funding environments.
Both Measure International Research, but Not in the Same Way
QS's International Research Network indicator carries 5%. It evaluates the geographic diversity of sustained international research partnerships.
THE's International Collaboration indicator contributes 2.5%. It examines the proportion of relevant publications with at least one international co-author and rewards higher volumes, with normalization that accounts for subject mix and national context.
These are related ideas but different constructs. One emphasizes the diversity and sustainability of an international research network; the other focuses on international co-authorship within the publication record.
Both Use Scopus, but That Does Not Make Their Bibliometric Indicators Equivalent
QS and THE both use bibliometric data associated with Elsevier's Scopus database for important research indicators. This sometimes creates the mistaken impression that their citation scores should be essentially the same.
The data source is only one part of the calculation. Rankings can use different publication windows, citation windows, document types, field normalization, institutional mappings, staff denominators, thresholds, transformations, and indicator formulas.
Two cooks can start with the same ingredients and still produce very different dishes. Bibliometrics is not exempt from this surprisingly durable academic principle.
THE Uses Research Output as an Eligibility Criterion
THE's 2026 methodology requires sufficient research output for institutions to receive a rank. Universities can be excluded if they have fewer than 1,000 relevant publications over the five-year period from 2020 through 2024, with fewer than 100 in any given year. Other eligibility criteria also apply.
This threshold reflects THE's stated focus on research-intensive universities.
QS uses different inclusion rules and should be assessed according to its own current methodology rather than assuming THE's eligibility thresholds apply.
Subject Rankings Change the Comparison Again
QS and THE both publish subject rankings, and these should not be interpreted using only their overall institutional-ranking formulas.
THE recalibrates indicator weights across its 11 subject areas. For example, Citation Impact carries 7.5% in Arts and Humanities but 17.5% in several science-oriented subject tables in the 2026 methodology.
QS subject rankings use indicators including Academic Reputation, Employer Reputation, Research Citations per Paper, H-index, and International Research Network, with indicator availability and weights varying by subject. Publication thresholds are also adjusted according to disciplinary publication patterns.
An institution can therefore perform very differently in an overall ranking and a subject ranking without contradiction.
Neither Ranking Should Be Read as a Direct Measure of Every University Mission
QS includes employability, faculty-student ratio, internationalization, and sustainability alongside research-related measures. THE includes teaching, international outlook, and industry alongside its research pillars.
Neither methodology measures every aspect of what a university might value. Community engagement, local relevance, particular forms of teaching quality, specialized professional service, cultural contribution, and other institutional missions may be only partially represented or absent.
This is why research matters greatly in global university rankings without making a ranking a comprehensive measure of university quality.
Different Methodologies Can Reward Different Institutional Profiles
| Institutional characteristic |
Why it may matter particularly to QS |
Why it may matter particularly to THE |
| Strong global academic reputation |
Academic Reputation carries 30% |
Research Reputation contributes 18%, with Teaching Reputation contributing separately |
| High citations relative to faculty size |
Directly relevant to Citations per Faculty |
Relevant through differently calculated research-quality indicators |
| High research income |
No direct flagship research-income indicator |
Research Income contributes 5.5% |
| High publication productivity per scholar |
No directly equivalent standalone indicator |
Research Productivity contributes 5.5% |
| Highly cited research across the distribution |
Captured primarily through Citations per Faculty |
Can affect Citation Impact, Research Strength, Research Excellence, and Research Influence differently |
| Geographically diverse international research network |
International Research Network contributes 5% |
International collaboration is measured through a different co-authorship indicator |
A Difference in Rank Does Not Mean One Ranking Is Wrong
If QS and THE measured exactly the same constructs using the same data and weights, substantial differences might require explanation as methodological inconsistencies. They do not.
A university that performs exceptionally in QS Academic Reputation and Citations per Faculty but has comparatively modest research income could receive a different relative result under THE. Another institution with strong research productivity, research income, and several forms of citation-based excellence may benefit differently from THE's more disaggregated research model.
The appropriate interpretation is that each ranking provides a result conditional on its methodology.
Watch Out
Do not compare QS and THE percentages as though indicators with similar labels measure identical constructs. “Citations,” “reputation,” and “international research” are operationalized differently. Read the technical methodology before drawing conclusions from the weights alone.
