The U.S. News released the 2019 edition of its Best Global Universities rankings on Oct. 30. It included data on 1,250 universities across 75 countries. Hunan University ranks 25th among Chinese first-class universities, 27th among the universities in Chinese mainland, and 457th worldwide.

Comparing that on the 2018 list, HNU’s ranking rises from 586th to 457th in terms of global rankings; from 30th to 25th in terms of Chinese first-class universities rankings; and, from 35th to 27th in terms of Chines mainland universities rankings.

A total of 161 Chinse universities are on the 2019 list, including 130 in Chinese mainland, 7 in Hong Kong, one in Macau, and 23 in Taiwan.

Thirteen indicators were used to calculate the rankings, including:

Global research reputation (12.5%);

Regional research reputation (12.5%);

Publications (10%); books (2.5%);

Conferences (2.5%);

Normalized citation impact (10%);

Total citations (7.5%);

Number of publications that are among the 10 percent most cited (12.5%);

Percentage of total publications that are among the 10 percent most cited (10%);

International collaboration (10%);

Number of highly cited papers that are among the top 1 percent most cited (5%); and,

Percentage of highly cited papers that are among the top 1 percent most cited (5%);

The four most influential global rankings are those produced by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), ShanghaiRanking Consultancy (the Academic Ranking of World Universities; ARWU), Times Higher Education (THE), and U.S. News. According to these rankings, Hunan University ranks 24th among Chinese mainland universities in terms of the accumulated results.