Hyderabad, Mar 26 (IANS): The University of Hyderabad (UoH) emerged as the top-ranked instution among the Indian universities in the prestigious Nature Index for 2020-2021. This year, UoH is ranked 18 overall among all institutions, a statement from the varsity said on Friday.

"The Nature Index functions as an indicator of high quality research in the natural and physical sciences, including chemistry, life sciences, earth and environmental sciences, and it is indeed a proud moment for the UoH, an Institution of Eminence, to continue to be ranked number 1 among the universities in successive years. Although our competition is with the established specialised research institutes and the IITs, as a multidisciplinary university, we do remarkably well. We need to work hard to better our ranks," said Appa Rao Podile, Vice-Chancellor, UoH.

"Receiving additional funding under the IoE mandates that we should have a presence in the top ranked institutions and therefore we have to benchmark our output with the top 100 performers globally, which is what we are setting out to do, in accordance with the Government of India's clear directives," he added.

The research outputs for UoH published between December 1, 2019 and November 30, 2020, tracked by Nature Index, were considered for ranking. Chemistry and physical sciences were evaluated for output subject wise. The UoH received a count of 54 and a share of 14.72.

A count of one is assigned to an institution if one or more authors are from that institution. Share is a fractional count that takes into account the percentage of authors from that institution and the number of affiliated institutions per article. The maximum combined share for any article is one.

There are 237 Indian institutions in the latest version of the Nature Index.