Sejong University was recognized for its research ability, taking the top place among local general universities in the Leiden Ranking for five consecutive years.

The Leiden Ranking, provided by Leiden University in the Netherlands, ranks universities worldwide by number of academic publications, evaluating the volume and citation impact of the publications.

While Sejong University was the No. 1 among local general universities on the list, it came in second among all local universities in Korea, including research universities.

UNIST took the top place, and POSTECH, KAIST, University of Ulsan followed.

On the international chart, Sejong University took the 394th place on the list, going up 79 steps compared to last year. It has been moving up on the list over the past years, recording the 592nd place in 2020 and 473rd place in 2021.

This year, the ranking evaluated 1,225 universities around the world that have released more than 800 research papers within the last four years.

Sejong University released 5,436 publications during the period and 729 of them were included in the top 10 percent of the most cited papers, which make up 13.4 percent of the total.

In the international chart, Rockefeller University, MIT, Princeton, Cal Tech, Stanford and Harvard took the top places, in that order.

“Sejong University has showed an eye-opening progress, making it into top 50s on the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings in recent two years, and being the No.1 among local general universities on the Leiden Ranking for five consecutive years,” an official from Sejong University said.

“The result means a lot as the it was achieved by every member from the university amid the tough COVID-19 pandemic times. Sejong University will work to become one of the top 100 universities in the world, let alone being one of the top 50 universities in Asia,” the official said.

By Im Eun-byel (silverstar@heraldcorp.com)