The results of the first edition of the Times Higher Education Interdisciplinary Science Rankings (ISR) 2025, prepared in cooperation with Schmidt Science Fellows, have been published. The University of Silesia in Katowice debuted in positions 6-10 in the national classification. The ranking included 749 institutions from 92 countries/territories.
The ranking measures the contribution and involvement of universities in the development of interdisciplinary sciences. It includes 11 carefully calibrated indicators that allow for the assessment of institutions in three key areas, representing the stages of the life cycle of research projects:
- inputs, with a weight of 19% – including financing of interdisciplinary research and financing from industry;
- processes, with a weight of 16% – including an assessment of the existence of success measures in interdisciplinary research, the availability of infrastructure intended for interdisciplinary teams, the availability of dedicated administrative support for interdisciplinary teams and the existence of a promotion system and recruitment processes taking into account interdisciplinary nature;
- outputs, with a weight of 65% – including the number of interdisciplinary publications, the percentage of interdisciplinary publications among all scientific publications, citations of publications beyond the discipline, the quality of interdisciplinary research (assessed on the basis of the 75th percentile of the FWCI index) and reputation (based on the results of a survey conducted among active scientists, selecting the best institutions in the field of interdisciplinary research).
In terms of the indicators analysing the area of processes, the University of Silesia turned out to be the leader among universities from Poland.
For the purposes of ISR 2025, only data from the field of exact sciences was included.
Interdisciplinary research holds the promise of utilising knowledge from multiple academic disciplines to solve global challenges. Full ranking results are available at: www.timeshighereducation.com/interdisciplinary-science-rankings.
