“Nicolae Testemitanu” University of the Republic of Moldova maintains its first place at the national level in Webometrics ranking

Nicolae Testemitanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy of the Republic of Moldova maintains its first place among the country’s universities in the Ranking Web of Universities (Webometrics) for the second consecutive year and has climbed 31 positions worldwide, compared with the dates of January 2023.

According to the Webometrics report, published at the end of January 2024, our university ranks 268th in Central and Eastern Europe, 1129th among higher education institutions present online on the European continent, and 3657th globally.

Nicolae Testemitanu University from the Republic of Moldova is a national leader in  Transparency, accumulating the highest number of citations of the authors' publications in Google Scholar profiles. Thus, the university recorded 44,746 citations, with 17,133 citations more than in January 2023 (27,613 citations), which is an increase of 62%.

Also, in terms of Excellence, the University ranks first in the country and has advanced by 102 positions worldwide. At the same time, last year Nicolae Testemitanu University climbed 379 positions in terms of Impact (Visibility) globally.

Rector Emil Ceban thanked the entire university community for this performance, emphasizing the fact that our institution's position as a national leader in the Ranking Web of Universities, but also in 3 other international rankings, is maintained through joint efforts, hard work and the contribution of each researcher, employee and training beneficiary of the University, in the context of promoting Open Access and Open Science, assuming the mission of integrating medical and pharmaceutical sciences in the world research area.

It should be mentioned that Nicolae Testemitanu University holds the leading position at the country level in the Webometrics ranking starting from July 2022.

Launched in 2004 by the Cybermetrics Lab from Spain (Spanish National Research Council, CSIC), the Ranking Web of Universities is a ranking system for universities around the world, which aims to motivate both institutions and researchers to constantly and equidistantly promote online their activities in the field. The main objective of the Webometrics ranking is to promote open access to knowledge generated by higher education institutions. The best strategy to improve your ranking is to increase the quantity and quality of your web content. This is the most extensive academic ranking of higher education institutions that provides an independent, objective, free and open scientific exercise to offer reliable, multidimensional, up-to-date and useful information about the performance of universities worldwide.

Ranking Web of Universities is published twice a year and currently analyzes 31 thousand higher education institutions from over 200 countries, according to three indicators:

50% – Impact (Visibility) – the total number of external links that the institution's web domain receives from third parties (Ahrefs Majestic);

10% – Transparency (Openness) – the total number of citations of university researchers that are found in the top of the 310 authors' profiles, excluding the first 20 profiles (Google Scholar Profiles);

40% – Excellence – the quality of scientific articles published in international journals with a high impact factor, in the top 10% most cited in 27 disciplines, according to 2018-2022 data (Scimago).

The organizers have some recommendations regarding author profiles on Google Scholar Citations (GSC): 

1. The need to indicate the official name of the university upon affiliation and the institutionally personalized email address of the author(s).

2.Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their personal profile information in Google Scholar. GSC automatically updates the profiles of authors which sometimes automatically add records and citations that do not belong to them. Authors should be aware of this and review their profiles periodically. Institutions should also monitor their community member profiles to exclude intentional (or unintentional) false, incorrect, or duplicate entries. These are the qualification requirements in the ranking, because the institution identified with such non-conformities may be excluded from future editions of the ranking.

 3.Non-individual profiles (journals, departments, groups, conferences) are penalized up to the exclusion of the entire institution (the number of citations is equal to zero).

4. Non-compliant practices. If multiple profiles of authors not belonging to the university are intentionally added to increase its rating, the institution will be excluded from the ranking. Over 1,500,000 GSC profiles have been analyzed in the current edition.

5.Figures are only valid at the time of data collection (January 1-20, 2024).

 6.A few universities have two main web domains, but only the top overall ranking is included in the main ranking.