TORONTO - The University of Toronto has scored another impressive result for its research in international rankings.

The SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) analyzed the research performance from 2003 to 2007 of 2,000 international research institutions and organizations in five sectors: higher education, government, health, corporate and others. In the category for higher learning, UofT finished fourth overall amongst institutions for higher learning, behind Harvard University, the University of Tokyo (Tokyo Daigaku) and the University of Michigan.

This finding comes on the heels of two other international ranking results that measured the quality, depth and impact of UofT's research activity and found it to be among the best in the world.

In July, the University finished 11th in rankings compiled by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT), which measures the productivity, impact and excellence of work published by university faculty and students. A week later, UofT placed 13th overall in tracking by ScienceWatch.com, an organization that tracks and analyzes basic research impact at institutions around the world.

"The SIR finding confirms yet again that the University of Toronto's researchers are among the best in the world," says UofT President David Naylor. "The SIR data also show that more than 40 per cent of publications with University of Toronto authors involved international collaboration."

SCImago is a research group affiliated with three universities in Spain - Granada, Extremadura and Carlos III (Madrid). Its rankings compile publication and citation data from more than 17,000 research publications, primarily journals and proceedings. The data is analyzed through the filter of five indicators: the number of papers published; the number of citations per publication; the number of papers published in collaboration with other international institutions; the importance of the journal in which the paper is published; and the scientific impact of the research paper.