The University earned its highest rankings worldwide and in the Philippines in the last five years that it has been included in the annual SCImago Institutions Rankings. The 2024 edition of the SCImago Institutions Rankings saw UST placing fifth among 15 Philippine-based research institutions, and 4987th out of 9054 research groups worldwide.
The Institutions Rankings covers research groups run by government agencies, hospitals, universities, private companies, and nonprofit organizations.
Figure 1. UST’s rankings in the SCImago Institutions Rankings
Source: SCImago
Given the 9054 institutions ranked in 2024, UST landed in the 56th percentile overall. In the three criteria of SCIMago, UST landed in the 23rd percentile for “societal impact”, 54th percentile for “innovation outputs”, and 79th percentile for “research performance”.
Figure 2. UST’s rankings in comparison with the rest of the world
Source: SCImago
Since the SCImago Institutions Rankings began in 2009, UST first landed in this list in the year 2020.
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, Laguna and the Diliman (Quezon City) campus of the University of the Philippines have been the top two Philippine-based research institutions from 2009 to 2024.
The top five Philippine institutions for 2024 are IRRI (2971stworldwide), UP Diliman (3151st), the Department of Science and Technology (DOST, 3334th), De La Salle University (4459th), and UST (4987th). About 15 research institutions were ranked last year.
SCImago’s Institutions Rankings computes a “composite indicator” that shows the combined score coming from three indicators: research performance, innovation outputs, and societal impact. These three indicators get measured by the research institutions’ web visibility.
These publicly-available Rankings <https://www.scimagoir.com> are run by SCImago Lab, a Spanish consulting firm that is a spin-off from the group called SCImago Research Group. SCImago Lab runs analyses of scientometrics, scientific publications and web visibility.
SCImago’s Institutions Rankings also use the world’s leading scholarly database Scopus, which is also used by academic consulting firms Quacquarelli Symonds and TIMES Higher Education in their annual world university rankings.
The 2024 SCImago Institutions Rankings see the “research performance” criterion carrying a 50 percent score, “innovation outputs” a 30 percent score, and “societal impact” a 20 percent score.
Among Philippine institutions, UST was ranked 12th out of 13 groups in 2023; eighth out of 14 groups in 2022; tenth out of 13 institutions in 2021; and eighth out of 12 Philippine groups in 2020.
Table 1. SCImago rankings of the University of Santo Tomas
| Overall ranking | Research criterion | Innovation criterion | Societal criterion | |
| 2024 | ||||
| Philippine ranking | 5 | 8 | 3 | 4 |
| Global ranking | 4987 | 7100 | 4875 | 2015 |
| Ranked PHL institutions | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| No. of ranked institutions | 9054 | |||
| 2023 | ||||
| Philippine ranking | 12 | 11 | 13 | 8 |
| Global ranking | 8132 | 7209 | 8083 | 5118 |
| Ranked PHL institutions | 13 | 13 | 13 | 13 |
| No. of ranked institutions | 8433 | |||
| 2022 | ||||
| Philippine ranking | 8 | 6 | 9 | 8 |
| Global ranking | 7295 | 6761 | 6617 | 5210 |
| Ranked PHL institutions | 14 | 14 | 14 | 14 |
| No. of ranked institutions | 8084 | |||
| 2021 | ||||
| Philippine ranking | 10 | 10 | 7 | 9 |
| Global ranking | 7103 | 6761 | 6302 | 5470 |
| Ranked PHL institutions | 13 | 13 | 13 | 13 |
| No. of ranked institutions | 7533 | |||
| 2020 | ||||
| Philippine ranking | 8 | 11 | 4 | 8 |
| Global ranking | 6432 | 6476 | 4918 | 5127 |
| Ranked PHL institutions | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| No. of ranked institutions | 7026 | |||
Source: SCImago
