Methodology

How the index is built

The Research Collaboration Index measures one thing precisely: how central a university is in the global research-collaboration network. It is objective, reproducible, and built entirely on open data.

What it measures

For every university, six indicators are computed from the network of its co-authored research with the world's leading research universities (2021-2025):

• Network influence (0.22) · weighted eigenvector centrality: partnering with well-connected institutions, not just partnering a lot.
• Brokerage (0.16) · betweenness centrality: how often the university bridges otherwise-separate research communities.
• Partner reach (0.14) · the number of distinct leading universities it collaborates with.
• Partner-country diversity (0.18) · the number of distinct countries its partners span, the international breadth of its network.
• Sustained partnership (0.15) · the count of deep partnerships (ten or more co-authored works), durable alliances rather than one-off papers.
• Participation intensity (0.15) · the volume of collaborative output, recency-weighted so current activity counts for more.

The three-step score

1. Each of the six indicators is computed for every university.
2. Each is converted to a within-cohort percentile (0 to 100), so different scales become comparable.
3. The Collaboration Score is the weighted sum of the six percentiles. The weights sum to one, so a weight is simply that measure's maximum share of the score.

The five-year window

The index uses a rolling five-year window of co-authored research (currently 2021 to 2025). Participation is recency-weighted: an institution's recent activity (its share of output in the most recent years) counts for more than older activity, so the index reflects current collaboration. Each annual edition rolls the window forward one year.

Subject areas and subject-level indices

Alongside the overall index, every university is scored within four broad research areas from the global scholarly taxonomy: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Health Sciences and Social Sciences. Each area is scored on its own collaboration network, so a specialist can lead in its field even if it is smaller overall.

Beneath the four areas, the index is also computed for every individual subject with enough data to rank at least 50 universities. Each subject is scored on its own worldwide co-authorship network using the identical six indicators, so a leader in one subject is a genuine global comparison and not a separate exercise. The 50-university threshold ensures every published index is statistically credible; subjects that do not clear it are not published rather than shown thinly. As coverage grows, more subjects qualify each edition.

Data, scope and identity

• Source: OpenAlex, the open global catalogue of scholarly works, authors and institutions (CC0, openly licensed). No surveys, no citations, no licensed commercial data enter the score.
• Cohort: the world's leading research universities (currently 1,195 institutions across 81 countries). The network is measured among these institutions, so the index reflects collaboration with the world's foremost research universities.
• Identity: institutions are resolved through the Research Organization Registry (ROR). Federated umbrella bodies are handled separately so their member universities are ranked in their own right.
• Reproducible: the entire pipeline runs on open data and can be independently rebuilt.

Funding data and its sources

The index does not rely on a single source. Funding is drawn from each authority where it is definitive, and every funder is named from the funders' own records, not inferred:

• European Commission (CORDIS) · verified euro amounts and project counts for Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020, mapped to each university. Over €30 billion of EU research funding is analysed.
• Crossref Funder Registry & OpenAlex Awards · grant records from funders' own systems worldwide: the US National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, UK Research and Innovation, the European Research Council, the German DFG, Japan's JSPS, China's NSFC, Wellcome and thousands more. In total, 19 million grants worth $6.1 trillion from 29,851 funders are analysed.
• National funder systems (NIH RePORTER, NSF, UKRI Gateway to Research, the Australian Research Council, Canada's tri-agency and others) are being integrated directly to deepen coverage where the open record is thin.

Funding coverage is uneven by region in the open record, so we show each university's funding only from the source that is authoritative for it (European Commission figures for EU universities, funder-registry grants elsewhere) rather than presenting an incomplete or misattributed total. Amounts in non-USD currencies are shown either in their native currency (EU) or converted at indicative rates for comparison; they measure analysed grant funding, not a quality verdict.

Data currency. Collaboration is measured over 2021-2025 from the OpenAlex record as at late June 2026; funding records reflect the same June 2026 data cut. The window and data refresh each edition.

What it does, and does not, do