UNIVERSITIES in Southeast Asia have emerged as UST’s top research collaborators, surpassing local institutions in joint scholarly projects.
Data from Elsevier Scopus obtained by the Varsitarian showed that from 2014 to 2023, seven out of UST’s top 10 research partners were universities from Southeast Asia, while only three were local institutions.
UST’s leading research partner over the past decade was the University of the Philippines (UP), tallying 2,839 citations across 221 co-authored publications. De La Salle University followed, amassing 1,056 citations across 109 co-authored publications.
Mahindol University in Thailand led UST’s international research collaborators, placing third overall. The partnership attained 2,059 citations across 88 co-authored publications, with 45 co-authors and a field-weighted citation impact score of 1.71.
Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan ranked fourth, with authors cited 1,250 times across 76 publications. University of Malaya in Malaysia landed at No. 5 with 74 scholarly outputs and 4,846 citations, the highest of the 10 schools.
The government-funded Philippine General Hospital ranked sixth with 1,171 citations across 72 co-authored publications.
National University of Singapore published 66 co-authored scholarly works that were cited 2,576 times to place seventh, followed by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which tallied 4,710 citations across 64 co-authored publications.
The University of Indonesia is at No. 9 with 2,423 citations across 60 co-authored publications. Rounding out the list was Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, which accumulated 2,383 citations from 60 co-authored publications.
Asst. Prof. Nestor Ong, head of UST’s Office of the QS/THE Rankings, noted that institutional support was key in developing the University’s international research collaborations.
“Top management provided necessary resources for research initiatives, faculty development, and infrastructure improvements,” Ong told the Varsitarian. “This support has enabled teams to engage in high-quality research and foster international collaborations, both critical for achieving a better ranking.”
“Internationalization efforts prioritized by increasing the number of international students and faculty, as well as fostering global partnerships. These initiatives have significantly contributed to UST’s strong performance in international outlook metrics,” he added.
Top research topics
Research on rubiaceae, new species, and miocene emerged as UST’s leading topics in terms of scholarly output, with 39 publications overall. These articles accounted for 8.92% of the University’s publications, placing in the 54.36 prominence percentile worldwide.
UST’s publication on myxogastria, amoebozoa, and slime mold placed in the 73.7 prominence percentile worldwide.
The metric looks into subject areas in which institutions can potentially make an impact.
Other research topics where UST excelled in are:
- Dystonia; parkinsonism; genetic disorder (29 publications; 58.75 prominence percentile);
- uvaria ; annonaceae; drug screening (16 publications; 64.73 prominence percentile);
- medicinal plant; antiinfective agent; ethnopharmacology (11 publications; 62.39 prominence percentile); and
- quito; case study; philosophy (10 publications; 27.12 prominence percentile).
Elsevier classifies these topics based on the common intellectual research problem in a collection of articles.
