Leiden 2026: MIT first for share of top 10% most cited publications; Rockefeller leads open edition

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) remains the world's top university for research publications that have the most impact, according to the Leiden ranking, published on 01/11/2026 by the CWTS research institute in the Netherlands. With 21.9% of publications belonging to the top 10% of their field in the period 2021-2024, the institution takes the lead in a ranking of 1,618 universities from 78 countries.

Four US universities feature in the top five: MIT, Princeton University (20.7%), the California Institute of Technology (19.8%) and Stanford University (18.6%), alongside Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (18.7%, 4^th). The rest of the top ten comprises Harvard University (US), Westlake University and City University of Hong Kong (China), King Abdullah University…