Impact Rankings 2023: peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG 16) methodology

This ranking focuses on how universities can support strong institutions in their countries and promote peace and justice. It explores universities’ research on law and international relations, their participation as advisers to government and their policies on academic freedom.

View the methodology for the Impact Rankings 2023 to find out how these data are used in the overall ranking.

Metrics

Research on peace and justice (27%)

• Proportion of papers in the top 10 per cent of journals as defined by Citescore (10%)
• Field-weighted citation index of papers produced by the university (10%)
• Number of publications (7%)

This focuses on research that is relevant to peace and justice. The field-weighted citation index is a subject-normalised score of the citation performance of publications.

The data are provided by Elsevier’s Scopus dataset, based on a query of keywords associated with SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions) and supplemented by additional publications identified by artificial intelligence. The data include all indexed publications between 2017 and 2021. The data are normalised across the range using Z-scoring.

University governance measures (26.6%)

• Elected representation on the university’s governing body (3.35%)
• Recognition of an independent students’ union (3.35%)
• Policies to engage local stakeholders (3.35%)
• Participatory bodies to engage local stakeholders (3.35%)
• Policies on organised crime, corruption and bribery (3.35%)
• Policies supporting academic freedom (6.6%)
• Publication of university financial data (3.25%)

The evidence was provided directly by universities, evaluated and scored by THE and not normalised.

Working with government (23.2%)

• Provide expert advice to government (6.4%)
• Provide outreach to policy- and lawmakers (6.4%)
• Undertake policy-focused research in collaboration with government departments (6.4%)
• Provide a neutral platform for political stakeholders to discuss challenges (4%)

The evidence for these metrics was provided directly by universities, was evaluated and scored by THE and was not normalised.

Proportion of graduates in law and civil enforcement (23.2%)

Universities can support justice through the provision of appropriately educated graduates, so we measured the number of graduates in law or civil policing subjects divided by the total number of graduates. All courses must include a positive ethical dimension. The data relate to the number of graduates in the 2021 academic year.

The data and evidence were provided directly by universities. The data were normalised across the range using Z-scoring.

Evidence

When we ask about policies and initiatives – for example, the existence of mentoring programmes – our metrics require universities to provide the evidence to support their claims. In these cases, we give credit for the evidence, and for the evidence being public. These metrics are not usually size normalised.

Evidence is evaluated against a set of criteria, and decisions are cross-validated where there is uncertainty. Evidence need not be exhaustive – we are looking for examples that demonstrate best practice at the institutions concerned.

Time frame

In general, the data used refer to the closest academic year to January to December 2021. The date range for each metric is specified in the full methodology document.

Exclusions

The ranking is open to any university that teaches at either undergraduate or postgraduate level. Although research activities form part of the method­ology, there is no minimum research requirement for participation.

THE reserves the right to exclude universities that it believes have falsified data, or are no longer in good standing.

Data collection

Institutions provide and sign off their institutional data for use in the rankings. On the rare occasions when a particular data point is not provided, we enter a value of zero.

View the full methodology for the THE Impact Rankings 2023 here.

The THE Impact Rankings 2023 will be published at 11:30am BST on 1 June.