Dartmouth social sciences ranks in top five internationally

Posted 07/02/01

Dartmouth College ranks fifth in the social sciences among research universities from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Canada, according to a recent report in the British newspaper The Guardian. Dartmouth ranked higher than all other U.S. institutions in the social sciences, except Tufts University, which ranked second.

The study evaluated the strength of universities in seven academic fields, based on the number and importance of research publications by faculty in that field. Researchers used a methodology called "bibliometrics," which analyzes the number of journal articles produced by researchers in an institution and the number of times those articles were later cited by other researchers.

"This is a testament to the outstanding accomplishments of our faculty. This ranking system controls for the size of the faculty and shows that members of our faculty are having a major impact on their fields," said Jamshed Bharucha, Dean of the Faculty.

The other U.S. institutions in the top 10 include Caltech, Yale, Harvard and the University of Chicago, which ranked seven, eight, nine and 10, respectively.

The study was carried out by the British company Evidence Ltd. based on data from ISI, a Philadelphia company that compiles the Science and Social Science Citation Index, the world's largest journal indexing service.