A listing of the top-ranked institutions in Australia and New Zealand published on the UK site Times Higher Education has placed Macquarie University in the top spot for environmental sciences and ecology research.

 

The list, which was put together using the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters, ranked institutions based on the citation impact of journal articles published over the last decade.

 

Macquarie appeared on the list in the number one spot locally and ranked as number 14 in the world.

 

According to the article Macquarie appears to be leading a trend in environmental sciences and ecology research that has emerged as a ‘strongly improving area for Australia and New Zealand’. The article pointed to Australia’s overall citation impact increasing to 23 per cent above the world average in the past decade as evidence of this trend.  The article said that Australian universities hold a larger world share of papers in this field and the influence of such papers has risen significantly over this period.

 

The only other Australian institution ranked in the world top 100 was James Cook University, which ranked second in Australia and New Zealand, and 42nd in the world.

 

Other Australian organizations in the local top ten were the Australian National University (No 5), Charles Darwin University (N0 6), the CSIRO (No 7), University of Queensland (No 8) and Monash University (No 10), while three New Zealand contenders made the top ten - Landcare Research New Zealand (No 3)the University of Auckland (No 4) and the University of Canterbury (No 9).

 

The Times Higher Education ranking for top institutions in Australian and New Zealand for research in environmental sciences and ecology is available here.