The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was first published in 2003 by the Center for World-Class Universities (CWCU) and the Graduate School of Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China). Since 2009, it has been prepared by the independent organization Shanghai Ranking Consultancy.

The ARWU is based on bibliometric data from which six indicators are constructed, including the number of alumni and staff who have won Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate Analytics, number of articles published in Nature and Science journals, number of articles indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index in the Web of Science, and per capita performance of each university. The ARWU ranking ranks over 2500 universities and publishes the top 1000. It also offers results by areas and disciplines.

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