PUB is the number of papers authored by an institution in an Academic Subject during the period of 2011-2015. Only papers of 'Article' type are considered. Data are collected from InCites database. Papers in different Web of Science categories are grouped into relevant Academic Subjects (Classification of Web of Science Categories into Academic Subjects).

Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) is the ratio of citation of papers published by an institution in an Academic Subject during the period of 2011-2015 to the average citation of papers in the same category, of the same year and same type. A CNCI value of 1 represents world-average performance while a value above 1 represents performance above the world average. Only papers of 'Article' type are considered. Data are collected from InCites database.

International collaboration (IC) is the number of publications that have been found with at least two different countries in addresses of the authors divided by the total number of publications in an Academic Subject for an institution during the period of 2011-2015. Only papers of ‘Article’ type are considered. Data are collected from InCites database.

TOP is the number of papers published in Top Journals in an Academic Subject for an institution during the period of 2011-2015. Top Journals are identified through ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Excellence Survey or by Journal Impact Factor. In 2017, 94 top journals selected by the Survey are used in rankings of 33 Academic Subjects. The list of the top journals can be found here. For Academic Subjects that do not have journals identified by the Survey, the JCR top 20% journals are used. Top 20% journals are defined as their Journal Impact Factors in the top 20% of each Web of Science category according to Journal Citation Report (JCR) 2015, and then aggregated into different Academic Subjects. Only papers of ‘Article’ type are considered. In the Academic Subject of Public Health, although a top journal is selected by the Survey, there is no ‘Article’ type paper on it, therefore we use JCR top 20% journals instead.

AWARD refers to the total number of the staff of an institution wining a significant award in an Academic Subject. Staff is defined as those who work full-time at an institution at the time of winning the prize. If a researcher was retired at the time of winning the award, we count the institution where the researcher’s last full-time academic position was at. The significant awards in each subject are identified through ShanghaiRanking’s Academic Excellence Survey. The list of the significant awards in each subject can be viewed here. If a winner is affiliated with more than one institution at the time of winning the award, each institution is assigned the reciprocal of the number of institutions. If the award is awarded to more than one winner in one year, weights are set for winners according to their proportion of the prize. Different weights are set according to the periods of winning the prizes. The weight is 100% for winners in 2011-2015, 75% for winners in 2001-2010, 50% for winners in 1991-2000, and 25% for winners in 1981-1990.