In September 2016, Reuters published the first edition of its Top 75: Asia’s Most Innovative Universities. The list named Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) as the most innovative university in Asia, and the University of Tokyo came second. Japan and South Korea together held 17 of the top 20 places.
The ranking was compiled with data from the Intellectual Property & Science division of Thomson Reuters. It set out to identify the institutions doing the most to advance science, invent new technologies and help drive the global economy.
What the ranking measured
The methodology combined two kinds of evidence. Academic papers indicated basic research at a university. Patent filings showed an institution’s interest in protecting and commercialising its discoveries. Patents were a major part of the approach.
Reuters said it began by identifying more than 600 global organisations before narrowing the field to Asia. The ranking measured innovation at the level of the whole institution. Reuters cautioned that this could overlook particularly innovative departments or programmes, and that a university ranking low overall might still run a leading laboratory.
The 2016 results
KAIST took first place for original and influential research. Reuters pointed to its patent portfolio: organisations around the world cited it as prior art in their own patent applications more often than any other Asian university’s, which the ranking read as a sign of outsized influence on global research and development.
The University of Tokyo, founded in 1877 as Japan’s first Imperial university, was second. Reuters described it as enrolling more than 28,000 students, with 13 university-wide centres and 11 affiliated research institutes. Times Higher Education’s reproduction of the list showed Seoul National University third, Osaka University fourth and POSTECH fifth. Tohoku, Kyoto, Sungkyunkwan, Yonsei and Keio completed the top ten. Only South Korea and Japan placed universities in the top ten, with five each.
The highest-ranked institution outside Northeast Asia was the National University of Singapore, at 11th.
China, and the country counts
Tsinghua University in Beijing was China’s best performer at 13th. Reuters described it as a public research university with more than 45,000 students and eight Nobel laureates among its faculty. Peking University, at 16th, was the only other Chinese institution in the top 20.
China nonetheless had more entries than any other country, with 22 universities, a count that included those in Hong Kong. A separate analysis reported by a study-abroad site noted that this fell short of South Korea’s showing once population was taken into account. China has more than 1.37 billion people, and the site put it eighth of nine countries for ranked universities per capita.
| Country | Universities in 2016 list |
|---|---|
| China | 22 |
| South Korea | 20 |
| Japan | 20 |
| Australia | 6 |
| Singapore, Malaysia, India | 2 each |
New Zealand had one entry. Countries with large populations such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh had none. Reuters said an absence did not mean their universities were not doing important research.
How later editions compared
In June 2018, the third edition, compiled with Clarivate Analytics, again placed KAIST first, according to AsianScientist. It was KAIST’s third consecutive year at the top. The University of Tokyo stayed second, followed by POSTECH and Seoul National University. Tsinghua University rose into the top five, up one place from sixth the year before.
China’s count rose to 27 universities, three of them from Hong Kong. South Korea kept 20 and Japan had 19. Both countries still held four places each in the top ten. Australia had five entries, down from six in 2016, and Singapore had two. New Zealand and India had one each.