Reuters Top 100: The World's Most Innovative Universities
Reuters ranked the 100 universities it judged most innovative, combining patent activity with how often their research was cited in patents and papers. It ran from 2015 to 2019 and is useful mainly as a historical reference for tech-transfer strength.
- Reliability
- Grade B · 10/12
- Publisher
- Reuters
- Ranks
- Universities
- Editions
- 5 since 2015
- Method
- Data
- How items get in
- Compiled by the publisher
- Status
- Discontinued
Editions
How the ranking works
Reuters started from the 500 academic and government organizations with the most published articles, then cross-referenced them against patent filings and scored them on 10 metrics covering patent volume and success, patent citations, and citation of research in industry and academia (per Wikipedia's summary). Regional variants (Europe and Asia-Pacific) applied the same approach to a regional pool.
Ranked positions: Each item has a position (1, 2, 3), with ties allowed. No application or fee; candidates were drawn from the organizations with the most published articles and scored on patent and citation data.
How far to trust it
Superscout grades every ranking on six criteria, each scored 0 to 2. Reuters Top 100: The World's Most Innovative Universities scores 10 of 12, grade B.
- Transparency 1/2
- Method summarized (10 metrics) but weights not easily verifiable today.
- Independence 2/2
- Automatic selection from publication and patent data.
- Evidence 2/2
- Patent and citation data.
- Stability 2/2
- Same approach across its 2015 to 2019 run, as far as known.
- Coverage 1/2
- Top 100 from a pool of 500 prolific research organizations.
- Track record 2/2
- Five editions.
History
Reuters published the global ranking annually from 2015 to 2019, and Stanford led every edition. It also published Europe's Most Innovative Universities (KU Leuven first in every edition from 2016 to 2019) and Asia Pacific's Most Innovative Universities (KAIST 2nd in 2019), plus a separate list of innovative government institutions. No edition has appeared since 2019.
How it is received
The list was widely promoted by universities, notably KU Leuven and KAIST, as evidence of tech-transfer strength. Wikipedia's rankings overview lists it with the note that its last available edition was 2019. Its reliance on patent data favors engineering and life-science universities in patent-heavy systems.
Strengths
- Focused on innovation outputs (patents, patent citations) rather than reputation.
- No application or fees.
- Regional editions for Europe and Asia-Pacific.
- Clear, stable leader across its run.
Weaknesses
- Discontinued after 2019.
- Method details and full tables are hard to access now.
- Patent-based metrics favor engineering and biomedical schools.
- Only five editions.
Open questions
Facts not verified yet. They stay visible so they are not mistaken for settled facts.
- Full top 100 lists for 2015 to 2019 not transcribed (reuters.com blocked; web search budget exhausted).
- Exact publication dates for 2015 to 2018 not confirmed.
- Data partner (Clarivate Analytics, formerly Thomson Reuters IP & Science) not confirmed from sources accessed.
- Europe and Asia-Pacific variants not given separate files: Europe 2016 to 2019 (KU Leuven first each year) and Asia-Pacific (at least 2019; leader not confirmed).
- First edition year (2015) is inferred from Stanford's five-year streak ending in 2019.
Superscout describes Reuters Top 100: The World's Most Innovative Universities independently from the publisher’s own pages and outside coverage, linked below. The rankings belong to Reuters.