Swinburne among world’s top 15 universities for scientific impact

Swinburne University of Technology has excelled in several metrics within the 2024 CWTS Leiden Rankings.

The CWTS Leiden Ranking is an online platform that offers bibliometric insights into the scientific performance of over 1,500 major universities worldwide.

This year, Swinburne is among the top 15 institutions in the world, and second in Australia, for scientific impact across all disciplines, based on the proportion of a university’s papers that are in the top 1 per cent most frequently cited.

Swinburne’s 2024 result on this metric is an increase from our number 43 position in 2023, and 383 position a decade ago, demonstrating our reputation as a young university rising on the global stage. 

Our Mathematics and Computer Science research publications are now ranked at number 1 in the world (up from number 2 in 2023), with 6.8 per cent of Swinburne's publications among the top 1 per cent most frequently cited in this field.

The latest results reflect the innovative research our academics are publishing in scientific journals, contributing to solving real-world problems, transforming industries, shaping lives, and creating positive change.

They continue Swinburne’s strong record across major worldwide university rankings, including our recent global top 150 result in the 2024-25 US News Best Global Universities Ranking, and our 24th position in the Times Higher Education Young University Rankings 2024.

World-leading research collaborations

The university also ranked highly on a range of collaboration metrics, including:

• 12th in the world for long distance collaboration, based on the proportion of papers with a geographical collaboration distance of greater than 5,000km.
• 188th in the world for international collaboration, proportionate to the number of publications co-authored by two or more countries.
• 205th in the world for interinstitutional collaboration, proportionate to the number of publications co-authored with one or more other organisations.

Professor Karen Hapgood, Swinburne's Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research, said the achievements reflect Swinburne's commitment to international collaboration.

“As a globally connected university, we're driven to grow our high quality international joint publications with co-authored research papers and reports,” Professor Hapgood said.

Remarkable progress in research excellence

Swinburne’s strong performance in the CWTS Leiden Rankings this year is a testament to the dedication and capability of our researchers working across our specialist institutes and centres, strategic platforms and initiatives. 

Professor Hapgood said the results reflect Swinburne's ongoing commitment to high quality, impactful research that enhances our reputation worldwide.  

“We're making remarkable progress in research excellence. These latest metrics validate our vision of innovation and how we’re doing things differently at Swinburne,” she said. 

“While we’re more than our rank, we’re also proud to be recognised as among the best in the world for our highly cited research publications.”

The CWTS Leiden Ranking recognises the global More Than Our Rank initiative in their latest release, to which Swinburne is a signatory.

As a unique and forward-facing ranking, the CWTS Leiden Ranking methodology supports flexible ways to measure and view research excellence through a variety of sophisticated indicators.