GAINESVILLE, Fla. — It’s official – the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences is producing world-class research…and the proof is in the papers.
Rankings issued this month by National Taiwan University place several UF/IFAS programs among the best in the world, in terms of the quality and quantity of research publications they generated.
The most significant result was UF’s fourth-place finish in the field of agriculture publications. In the rankings program, “field” was a broadly defined area of study, encompassing many specialties.
In the narrower category of “subject,” UF was ranked fifth in plant and animal science, fifth in agricultural sciences and sixth in environment/ecology.
“These are incredible results, yet I’m not surprised,” said Jack Payne, UF senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources. “I’ve been consistently impressed by the published work from our faculty. These rankings show that UF/IFAS research is competitive with work conducted at top institutions around the globe.”
Payne noted that the rankings help advance one of his basic goals, raising UF/IFAS’ stature on the international stage.
The ranking program, formally known as Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities 2012, evaluates the published research output of 500 higher-education institutions worldwide.
The program evaluates published work from one calendar year – in this case, 2011. It gauges three factors: the quantity of published papers coming from the institution; the stature of the journals where the papers appeared; and the number of citations the papers earned.
The strong showing was made possible by the diligent and sustained efforts of UF/IFAS faculty members, said John Hayes, UF/IFAS dean for research.
“This wonderful honor is not an overnight accomplishment, it’s the result of many years’ effort by hundreds of people,” Hayes said. “This really is a report on the health of our whole research enterprise, and it says we’re doing a fantastic job. This report lets us know we’re headed in the right direction.”
Overall, UF ranked 37th among world institutions.
The NTU rankings include evaluations of six broad fields of academic endeavor. UF had Top 100 scores for all of them, including agriculture (UF ranked 4th), clinical medicine (UF ranked 66th), engineering (UF ranked 49th), life sciences (UF ranked 63rd), natural sciences (UF ranked 56th) and social sciences (UF ranked 52nd).
In the narrower category of “Subjects,” there were 14 individual rankings. For UF, they were:
Agricultural Sciences – 5
Chemical Engineering – 147
Chemistry – 59
Civil Engineering – 36
Computer Science – 73
Electrical Engineering – 41
Environment/Ecology – 6
Geoscience – 88
Materials Science – 61
Mathematics – 79
Mechanical Engineering – 61
Pharmacology/Toxicology – 56
Physics – 68
Plant and Animal Science – 5
The rankings have been produced since 2007 by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan.
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Contacts
Writer: Tom Nordlie, 352-273-3567, tnordlie@ufl.edu
Source: Jack Payne, 352-392-1971, jackpayne@ufl.edu
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