World's Best Universities: Academic Peer Review

U.S.News & World Report's World's Best Universities rankings, based on the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings, identified these to be world's top universities in 2009.

Schools by Location The Top 200 Asian and Middle Eastern Australian and New Zealand British and European Canadian Schools by Subject The Top 200 Arts and Humanities Engineering and IT Life Sciences and Biomedicine Natural & Physical Sciences Social Sciences Methodologies World's Best Universities Methodology Subject Area Rankings Methodology Academic Peer Review Citations per Faculty Member Student-to-Faculty Ratio Employer Review Survey International Student and International Faculty Factors Weightings and Statistical Scores About the World's Best Universities Rankings

How is the academic peer review score determined for the 2009 U.S. News World's Best Universities rankings?

The academic peer review is the centerpiece of these rankings, which are based on data from the THE-QS World University Rankings, produced in association with QS Quacquarelli Symonds. The academic peer review carries a weighting of 40 percent of the university's overall score. It is the ranking indicator that attracts the greatest interest and the greatest scrutiny.

The final academic peer review scores are compiled based on three years' worth of responses from academics around the world to an online survey. The names that are surveyed are obtained from two key databases: the World Scientific, from which 180,000 E-mail addresses are drawn, and the International Book Information Service (IBIS), a service from Mardev. The total number of respondents considered for the 2009 results (including those from 2007and 2008 who have not updated their responses) was 9,386.