UNIST continues to remain as one of South Korea’s top institutions, according to the JoongAng Ilbo University Assessment’s 2019 rankings, released on November 16 and 26, 2019. In this year’s ranking, UNIST has been placed at the 5th position in both fields of engineering and natural science and ranked 1st place in its materials science and engineering competitiveness index.
The JoongAng Ilbo University Assessment, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, has conducted an assessment for four-year universities in South Korea. This annual academic assessment encompasses comprehensive evaluation, evaluation of academic disciplines, and education-centered university evaluation. As a research-intensive university, UNIST has been included in the assessment of engineering and natural science diciplines, only.
UNIST has been ranked No.5 in both fields of engineering and natural science. For the evaluation of engineering disciplines (left), 42 universities participated and for the natural science disciplines (right), 49 universities participated.
In this year’s evaluation of engineering disciplines, 42 universities participated and for the evaluation of natural science disciplines, 49 universities participated. UNIST took 5th place in both evaluations, thus has made its marks as a leading institute for the research and education. In its announcement, JoongAng Ilbo noted, “It is noteworthy to point out UNIST with only 10 years of history has been ranked No.5 in both fields of engineering and natural science.”
UNIST’s exceptional research performance are clearly demonstarted in the number of citations per international paper. The results shown that UNIST has the highest average of cited papers in engineering disciplines, and second highest average of cited papers in natural science disciplines. JoongAng Ilbo noted, “In 2019, the Index results show clearly that UNIST emphasizes the importance of research quality (Citation impact) over quantity.” Commenting on the high caliber research being done at UNIST, JoongAng Ilbo also stressed active international collaboration by researchers in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST. In particular, the following names have been mentioned: Distinguished Professor Sang Il Seok, Distinguished Professor Jaephil Cho, Professor Jin Young Kim, and Professor Jong-Beom Beak.
Along with the university assessment, JoongAng Ilbo also analyzed the research performance of researchers from major institutions, within South Korea. Among them, Distinguished Professor Sang Il Seok appeared to be outstanding, as his average citation per paper published during the evaluation period (2014-2017) remain high among his peers. Besides, Professor Seok has been also featured in JoongAng Ilbo’s exclusive article, introducing his research competitiveness of perovskite solar cells.
Professor Seok has also distinguished himself with inclusion in the prestigious Clarivate Analytics list of ‘2019 Highly Cited Researchers’ and this is the second time he has been named to the list. The annual list, published last month, included researchers with multiple papers ranking in the top 1% by citations for their field and publication year. This year, about 41 researchers in South Korea named to 2019 HCR list, which includes 6 faculty members from UNIST: Distinguished Professor Rodney S. Ruoff, Distinguished Professor Jaephil Cho, Distinguished Professor Kwang Soo Kim, Distinguished Professor Sang Il Seok, Professor Jong-Beom Baek, and Professor Hyun-Wook Lee. UNIST, along with Seoul National University, hold the highest number of HCRs in South Korea, with 9 and 7 authors, respectively. These outstanding results once again demonstrate UNIST’s research excellence.
This has been also proved in JoongAng Ilbo’s Analysis of Research Competitiveness based on Academic Fields, released on November 23, in which UNIST ranked No.1 in the discipline of materials science and engineering. This analysis was based on the average citations per paper published in the past five years (2014–2018). JoongAng Ilbo, jointly with Clarivate Analytics, analyzed the citation rates of SCI journals published in 22 academic fields, such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, and clinical medicine, thus announced their results.
Meanwhile, Seoul National University achieved the No.1 spot in this year’s JoongAng Ilbo’s Comprehensive University Assessment. POSTECH has been ranked No.1 in the evaluation of both natural science and engineering diciplines, and KAIST came in second place by a small margin. For the evaluation of natural science diciplines, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul National University, and UNIST followed. With regard to the evaluation of engineering diciplines, next came Sungkyunkwan University, Korea University, and UNIST.
