Peking, Tsinghua universities edge up in Times Higher Education rankings

Two of the mainland's top universities have made moderate gains in the latest global university rankings. But researchers say the country's universities in general need to become more international and improve the quality of their research to be more competitive.

Peking University ranked 45 in the 2013-2014 World University Rankings, up one place. Tsinghua University went up two notches to 50 in the list, to be released today.

The editor of the rankings, Phil Baty, said one area that might affect Chinese universities was that they focused too much on research productivity, as research output had grown rapidly.

Chinese scientists published 1.14 million research papers over the past 10 years, making it the world No 2 in terms of volume, the reported, citing a study by the Information Science and Technology Institute of China. In 2010, China ranked No4 in volume.

However, the research showed that Chinese research papers published in international journals were cited only 6.91 times on average, far below the world average of 10.69 times, an indication of a culture among Chinese academics of putting volume ahead of quality.

"But what is important now [for a global university] is to produce high-quality papers with an impact," Baty said.