The ranking is prepared annually by the Center for World-Class Universities (CWCU), Graduate School of Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. Since 2009 the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has been published and copyrighted by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, a fully independent organization on higher education intelligence and not legally subordinated to any universities or government agencies. In total, more than 1200 universities are ranked by indicators of academic or research performance, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, papers published in Nature and Science, papers indexed in major citation indices, and the per capita academic performance of an institution. The list of best 500 is published on the web. This ranking is recognized as one of the oldest and most reputable ones.
Top-500 of ARWU 2016 features only three Russian universities with MSU taking the 87th position, SPbSU in the band 301-400 and NSU 401-500.
Entering top-500 of this highly regarded ranking has become a result of continuous effort of a dedicated community of the whole university team working toward increasing the international recognition of Novosibirsk State University according to the Project 5-100. The Shanghai Academic Ranking is one of most conservative among international rankings. I am not exaggerating if I say that the basis of our present success was founded tens of years ago, together with founding Akademgorodok. Close ties between science and education have become a signature of NSU. Our mission at the stage that we are going through at present is to keep these ties and together with our partners — research institutes and the Technopark — to increase the number of qualified specialists for high-tech and innovative industries in Russia.
