World University Rankings 2024 by subject: arts and humanities methodology

The World University Rankings 2024 by subject will be published at 6am BST on 26 October.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024 arts and humanities subject ranking includes a range of narrower subject areas.

The subjects used to create this ranking are:

• Art, performing arts and design
• Languages, literature and linguistics
• History, philosophy and theology
• Architecture
• Archaeology

Different weights and measures

The subject tables employ the same range of 18 performance indicators used in the overall World University Rankings 2024, brought together with scores provided under five categories.

However, the overall methodology is carefully recalibrated for each subject, with the weightings changed to suit the individual fields. In particular, those given to the research indicators have been altered to fit more closely the research culture in each subject, reflecting different publication habits: in arts and humanities, for instance, where the range of outputs extends well beyond peer-reviewed journals, we give less weight to paper citations.

The weightings for the arts and humanities ranking are:

• Teaching: the learning environment
  37.3 per cent 
• Research environment: volume, income and reputation
  37.2 per cent 
• Research quality: strength, influence and excellence
  15 per cent
• International outlook: staff, students and research
  7.5 per cent
• Industry: income and patents 
  3 per cent

Criteria

Two criteria determine eligibility for the THE subject rankings: a publication threshold by discipline and an academic staff* threshold by discipline.

No institution can be included in the overall World University Rankings unless it has published a minimum of 1,000 relevant publications over the five years that we examine (2018-2022 for the 2024 rankings).

For the 11 subject tables, the publication thresholds are different. For arts and humanities, the threshold drops to 250 papers published in this discipline over the five-year period.

There is also an academic staff criterion. For arts and humanities, we expect an institution to have at least 5 per cent of its academic staff or at least 50 academic staff members in the discipline.

*Academic staff is defined as the full-time equivalent number of staff members employed in an academic post, for example, lecturer, reader, professor.