First global university collaboration ranking crowns Hong Kong

A new Research Collaboration Index ranks 1,195 universities in 81 countries by the scale and reach of their research partnerships, not their reputation. The first global results put the University of Hong Kong at No. 1 and spotlight 26 subject award winners whose work powers major international collaborations.

Why it matters: - The Research Collaboration Index measures which universities actually build knowledge together across borders. - The ranking shifts attention from prestige to measurable collaboration, a metric that can be checked at source. - The results show that global science now depends on wide research networks, with leading universities working across more than 75 countries.

What happened: - Global Research Partnerships launched the Research Collaboration Index today at globalresearchpartnerships.com/rci. - The index ranks 1,195 universities in 81 countries using only the open scholarly record. - The University of Hong Kong finished No. 1 with a score of 97.8 and 1,172 collaborating institutions worldwide. - The top five also include the National University of Singapore, the University of Oxford, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and University College London. - The project also named 26 Subject Award winners, recognizing individual academics behind major research partnerships.

The details: - The RCI uses 2021-2025 data from more than 26 million co-authored works. - The methodology fractionally counts outputs so no paper is double-credited. - Six pillars shape the ranking: network influence, partner reach, partner-country diversity, citation impact of joint output, sustained deep partnerships and international intensity. - Subject indices apply the same framework across 26 fields. - The subject leaders highlighted in the release include Wageningen in Agricultural Sciences, Oxford in Medicine and Hong Kong in Economics. - The award list included Lidwine B. Mokkink of the University of Amsterdam, winner of the Decision Sciences Subject Award 2026. - Mokkink was recognized for “COSMIN guideline for systematic reviews of patient-reported outcome measures version 2.0,” published in Quality of Life Research in 2024 and cited 377 times. - Stavros Petrou of the University of Oxford won the Economics, Econometrics & Finance Subject Award 2026. - Petrou was recognized for “Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards 2022 (CHEERS 2022) Statement: Updated Reporting Guidance for Health Economic Evaluations,” published in Value in Health in 2022 and cited 1,085 times. - The full methodology is published at the methodology. - The full results and all 26 subject rankings are available at the full results.

Between the lines: - The ranking is designed to be harder to game than conventional league tables because it uses only public co-authorship records and no surveys or submissions. - The first results suggest collaboration strength can diverge from traditional prestige rankings. - The Subject Awards shift attention from institutions to the researchers whose cited work helps hold large partnerships together.

What's next: - Global Research Partnerships says the index is free, public and independent, and that the publisher relationship does not affect rankings. - The company also says the awards and rankings are now available for public review through the results portal. - Social channels linked in the release include Global Research Partnerships on LinkedIn and Global Research Partnerships on YouTube.

The bottom line: - The new RCI turns research collaboration into a ranked, auditable metric and gives Hong Kong the first No. 1 spot in a global map of who builds science together.