Top 10 Universities in ISC World University Rankings by Subject 2020 in Humanities

Introduction

The Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC) introduced its new global university ranking system “World University Rankings by Subject 2020” (www.wur.isc.ac) in 2021. Of course, ranking is not a new practice in ISC. In fact, ISC – as an ISESCO-Affiliated Center – based on its duties, has been ranking OIC universities since its establishment in 2008. But in 2018, it took the initiative to upgrade its regional ranking system into a global one which releases global university rankings annually. After a decade of doing various rankings, including national, regional, and global rankings, and due to valuable experiences in this field (ISC known as the only ranking authority in Iran since 1999), ISC started to rank world universities based on subject areas for the first time.

This new ranking system reports the status of more than 2000 universities from all over the world with regard to their field and subject. They were selected from a population of more than 3000 universities.

In ISC World University Rankings by Subject, the OECD hierarchical classification structure is used. In this structure, all subject areas are divided into 6 main categories and 42 subcategories (eventually 3 subcategories are left out). The 6 main categories in this ranking system are: Natural Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Medical and Health Sciences, Agricultural Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities.

In order to collect more information on the methodology of this ranking system, you can refer to the following link: https://wur.isc.ac/Home/SubjectiveMethodology

Humanities

This major subject includes the following minor subjects:

• Art 
• History and Archaeology 
• Languages and Literature 
• Philosophy,  Ethics and Religion
• Other Humanities     

In the current report, the top 10 universities in Humanities in OIC region and in the world are introduced as follows:

As Table 1 indicates, in ISC World University Rankings by Subject 2020, the best universities in Humanities in the world are University of Oxford (UK), Harvard University (USA), and University College London (UK) respectively.

It is noticeable that the USA and UK with four universities have higher number of universities in ISC’s top 10 list in Humanities.

As Table 2 reveals, according to ISC World University Rankings by Subject 2020, the best universities in Humanities in OIC are Universiti Malaya (Malaysia), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (Malaysia), and Middle East Technical University (Turkey) respectively.

Among OIC region, Malaysia with four universities has the highest number of universities in ISC’s top 10 list in Humanities.