Japan takes three of the world's top five in new Industry Collaboration Index as Asian universities lead 15 of 20 sector rankings

Four Asian partnerships, including Seoul National University with Samsung, win Sector Awards; Asian universities hold 44 of 60 top-three sector places.

Title card for the Industry Collaboration Index 2026, Asia results, by Global Research Partnerships: Japan takes three of the world's top five, with The University of Tokyo No. 3, Kyoto University No. 4 and The University of Osaka No. 5 of 1,038; Asian universities lead 15 of 20 sector rankings, hold 16 of the top 100 places and win four of the 22 Sector Awards. Results published 15 October 2026. — The University of Tokyo, Kyoto University and The University of Osaka are Nos. 3, 4 and 5 in the Industry Collaboration Index 2026, behind Wageningen and MIT, as Asian universities lead 15 of 20 sector rankings. Results and Sector Award winners published by Global Research Partnerships on 15 October 2026. Image: Global Research Partnerships. Download the high-resolution image (2400 x 1350, JPEG)

The University of Tokyo, Kyoto University and The University of Osaka are Nos. 3, 4 and 5 in the Industry Collaboration Index (ICI), a new global ranking of 1,038 universities on research co-written with companies, published today by Global Research Partnerships (GRP). Only Wageningen University & Research (No. 1) and MIT (No. 2) place higher. Asian universities hold 16 of the top 100 and 78 of the top 300, and lead 15 of the 20 published sector rankings.

Tokyo co-wrote more than 4,100 verified works with companies, working every year with NTT and Mitsubishi Electric; Osaka co-wrote 2.02 times what its mix of fields predicts. Japan has ten universities in the top 100, among them Hokkaido (No. 15), Kyushu (No. 20) and Tohoku (No. 21).

The 22 Sector Awards go to the highest-scoring eligible partnership in each category, with no panel, nomination or payment; Asia wins four. Seoul National University (No. 18) and Samsung, the index's largest partnership with a company that is not state-owned (885 joint works in all fields), win Batteries and Energy Storage. Pohang University of Science and Technology wins Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology with Pohang Iron and Steel; Sungkyunkwan (No. 35) and Yonsei (No. 47) give South Korea three of the top 100.

Nagoya University wins Semiconductors and Microelectronics with Toyota Central Research and Development Laboratories and leads that ranking (1 of 109); Taiwan's National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, a partner of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company every year, and Osaka are 2 and 3 of 109. Beijing University of Chemical Technology wins Climate, Environment and Sustainability with Aerodyne Research.

Mainland Chinese universities, often with state-owned partners, lead 14 of the 20 sector rankings, Tsinghua University five of them, including Artificial Intelligence (1 of 292); Tsinghua is No. 45 overall and Peking University No. 68.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong leads Hong Kong at No. 196 and is 14 of 292 in Artificial Intelligence. India's 23 ranked universities are led by the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (No. 653), partnered with Tata Steel every year, and Padjadjaran University (No. 827) leads Indonesia.

Most global rankings rest on reputation surveys, publications and citations, with collaboration at most a minor indicator. GRP's two indices measure it directly, the Research Collaboration Index (RCI) between universities and the ICI with industry, with no surveys or self-reported figures. From 2021 to 2025, the 1,192 universities analysed co-wrote 429,958 verified works with 40,786 company groups; Asian universities co-wrote more than 194,000 of those works.

GRP checked 2,070,335 candidate university-company links against authors' affiliation text, confirming 1,148,566, and tested every overall position across 200 re-runs with the evidence resampled and the weights varied.

“Co-authored research is one visible, checkable trace of how universities and companies work together, and it deserves evidence as careful as any citation count. Every link in this index can be traced to what a researcher wrote about where they work,” said Daniel Llewellin of Global Research Partnerships.

Since the RCI launched on 15 September, universities from Arizona to Sydney have celebrated their results. Asian universities hold three of the RCI's top four places: the University of Hong Kong (No. 1), the National University of Singapore (No. 2) and The Chinese University of Hong Kong (No. 4). Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka are 149, 281 and 378 of 1,195 there: the two indices reveal different strengths.

The GRP Partnership Intelligence Platform, opening to partner universities on Monday 19 October, turns both indices and published funder records into next steps, from finding partners to matching live funding calls. It cannot change any position. GRP confirms availability and pricing with each university; onboarding takes three days. Early access: globalresearchpartnerships.com/platform/#first-access

Full results: globalresearchpartnerships.com/ici/
Media enquiries: globalresearchpartnerships.com/ici/press/

ENDS

About Global Research Partnerships

Global Research Partnerships (GRP) publishes the Research Collaboration Index and the Industry Collaboration Index, two indices of equal standing built from the open scholarly record. The index is free, public and independent; no commercial relationship changes any position. globalresearchpartnerships.com

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Interviews, data and image requests: use the Industry Collaboration Index press and media page. Corrections and other requests about the index: the requests page.

Notes to editors

Asia in this release: the 357 universities analysed in mainland China, Japan, Indonesia, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Pakistan and Singapore, and one each in Macau, Nepal, Bangladesh and Tajikistan (the index's Asia-Pacific region without Australia and New Zealand, which have their own release); 312 are ranked. Every position is a world position among the 1,038 ranked universities.
Coverage: 1,192 universities in 81 countries and territories; research co-authored with companies in the open scholarly record, 2021 to 2025. The 1,038 with at least 100 verified industry works are ranked. Bands: Platinum 1 to 100, Gold 101 to 300, Silver 301 to 600, none beyond.
Sectors: a university is ranked in a sector with at least 20 verified industry works in it; the sector score weights volume 30%, reach 25%, repeat partnerships (three or more works over two or more years) 25% and network influence within the sector 20%. Each sector position uses that sector's own pool (for example, 1 of 109 in Semiconductors and Microelectronics), and sectors with fewer than 50 eligible universities are provisional. The Robotics and Autonomous Systems ranking is withheld (9 eligible, below the minimum of 10); its Sector Award is still made.
Pillars, each a percentile among ranked universities: co-creation 30% (the share of a university's research co-written with a verified company, against what its mix of fields predicts), durability 20% (the share of that work in sustained partnerships), scale 30% (the size of its industry network) and breadth 20% (how varied its company partners' main research fields are).
Robustness: every published overall position is tested across 200 re-runs in which the works are resampled and each pillar weight varies by up to 25%.
The winner in each category is the finalist with the highest partnership score (volume of joint work 40%, years active 30%, field-weighted citation impact 30%) in the frozen Edition 1 record. No panel, nomination or payment plays any part. Partnerships with universities in Asia hold 44 of the 206 finalist places.
Industry and awards: market-producing state-owned enterprises count as industry, following the OECD Frascati Manual, and are marked throughout. Award eligibility is screened: partnerships with state-owned or state-controlled companies, with companies or universities on UK, EU, UN or US sanctions or restricted-party lists, or with companies that are primarily defence producers cannot win an award. The index itself counts every verified partnership.
Joint works: Seoul National University and Samsung, 885 joint works from 2021 to 2025 in all fields; the five larger partnerships in the index are all with state-owned companies. In the Batteries and Energy Storage award the pair's joint works within that sector are 36. Asian universities: more than 194,000 of the 429,958 verified works have at least one verified link from a university in Asia.
What the index does not measure: it shows co-authored research between universities and companies, not confidential projects, consultancy or licensing, and it does not show that jobs, products, therapies or economic outcomes resulted from any partnership. Clinical trials and funded partnerships are reported on university profiles, not scored.
Reuse: the rankings, sector indices, award finalists, company verification table, topic-to-sector map and full link ledger are released under CC BY 4.0; attribute as “Industry Collaboration Index, Global Research Partnerships”. The RCI and the ICI have equal standing, and every university profile links to both.

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