Birzeit University leads Palestinian universities in Google Scholar and ranks 31st among Arab universities

Based on the Google Scholar citation data issues in the current edition (June 2018) by Webometrics; Birzeit University has retained its position for five consecutive years coming first among ten Palestinian universities that entered the ranking list of this this year, and the thirty first among Arab universities. Globally, the university is ranked 1615 among world universities.

Google Scholar citation data counts the number of citations of articles by researchers who have accounts on the Google Scholar online platform. Citations are considered an important factor for measuring the quality and credibility of the university’s publications, which reflects the quality and effectiveness of scientific publications. The universities are listed based on the total number of citations of the top ten professors from each university, and then dropping the top professor from each university in order to account for outliers.  The data reported 28,211 citations of Birzeit University researchers, an increase of 17.6% compared to last year’s ranking. The next Palestinian had 19,605 citations and was ranked 1969 among world universities. These rankings point to the quality of scholarly research and its impact.

Another a well-known database of research citations, SCOPUS, indexed 20.1 citations per article for Birzeit University. This number is double the number of citations (9.5) for research conducted by Palestinians in general. The rankings by Google Scholar and SCOPUS align with the increase in the number of Birzeit University publications that have qualified the university to enter the QS World Ranking.