Leiden 2025: US universities top ranking for most influential research publications

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is the world's top university for research publications that have the most impact, according to the Leiden ranking, published on 29/10/2025 by the CWTS research institute in the Netherlands. With 22.4% of publications belonging to the top 10% of their field, the institution takes the lead in a ranking of 1,594 universities from 77 countries.

The top five consists solely of US universities, while the rest of the top ten comprises two UK universities, one from Israel, one from Singapore and one Saudi Arabian university. The first EU university in the ranking is Italian and occupies 28^th place: Humanitas University with 16.3% of publications in the top 10%.

The Leiden Ranking also proposes an Open Edition that includes universities that have at least 1500 publications in the period 2020-2023 indexed in the OpenAlex database.

In the open edition of Leiden published on the same day, Rockefeller University (28.8%), MIT (23.1%) and Princeton University (22%) are the top three. The top 10 consists of five US universities, two Chinese…