Australia University Research Rankings
Compare Australia universities using recent research output, citation impact, growth and a transparent research-performance score.
Research landscape
The current ITS Research Intelligence dataset contains 67 index-ready universities in Australia. Across those institutions, the average five-year research output is approximately 16,484 works and the average five-year citation count is approximately 210,550. The average publication-growth signal is 15.2%. These figures describe the institutions that pass the public quality gate; they are not intended to represent every tertiary institution in the country.
Country rankings are useful for benchmarking because they reduce some of the structural differences that make global comparisons difficult. They still should not be treated as a complete assessment of institutional quality: teaching, student outcomes, funding levels, research field mix and institutional mission are outside this research-performance score. The value of the page is in seeing who is producing research, how that activity is changing, and where citation visibility is concentrated.
Top research universities in Australia
| Rank | University | Country | Score | 5-year works | 5-year citations | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Monash University | Australia | 87.1 | 95,198 | 1,368,088 | 4.6% |
| #2 | The University of Queensland | Australia | 87.0 | 80,120 | 1,100,408 | -1.0% |
| #3 | The University of Melbourne | Australia | 86.9 | 108,688 | 1,292,642 | 5.6% |
| #4 | The University of Sydney | Australia | 86.8 | 94,178 | 1,200,869 | 2.8% |
| #5 | UNSW Sydney | Australia | 86.2 | 80,632 | 1,190,352 | -5.2% |
| #6 | The University of Western Australia | Australia | 83.0 | 45,098 | 551,309 | -5.8% |
| #7 | Australian National University | Australia | 82.1 | 43,695 | 476,605 | -3.1% |
| #8 | University of Technology Sydney | Australia | 82.0 | 35,867 | 583,908 | -5.1% |
| #9 | RMIT University | Australia | 81.2 | 35,248 | 399,645 | 80.9% |
| #10 | Deakin University | Australia | 81.2 | 35,913 | 491,800 | -1.0% |
| #11 | Curtin University | Australia | 80.6 | 30,640 | 399,442 | -0.5% |
| #12 | Queensland University of Technology | Australia | 80.5 | 29,460 | 420,276 | -5.9% |
| #13 | Macquarie University | Australia | 80.3 | 33,704 | 394,718 | -2.9% |
| #14 | University of Wollongong | Australia | 80.1 | 23,083 | 322,578 | 15.5% |
| #15 | Griffith University | Australia | 79.6 | 31,415 | 366,984 | 2.1% |
| #16 | University of Newcastle Australia | Australia | 79.3 | 22,858 | 282,231 | 4.9% |
| #17 | Swinburne University of Technology | Australia | 79.3 | 20,046 | 352,849 | -1.9% |
| #18 | Western Sydney University | Australia | 77.7 | 22,732 | 254,116 | 6.5% |
| #19 | University of Tasmania | Australia | 77.2 | 23,685 | 240,246 | -10.1% |
| #20 | Flinders University | Australia | 76.7 | 22,470 | 222,167 | 16.2% |
| #21 | Edith Cowan University | Australia | 76.2 | 12,268 | 178,406 | 10.5% |
| #22 | Murdoch University | Australia | 75.9 | 11,563 | 147,078 | 5.6% |
| #23 | James Cook University | Australia | 75.8 | 16,237 | 163,466 | 4.4% |
| #24 | La Trobe University | Australia | 75.7 | 38,120 | 280,129 | -8.0% |
| #25 | University of Southern Queensland | Australia | 75.5 | 10,394 | 157,239 | 17.5% |
| #26 | Bond University | Australia | 73.6 | 5,236 | 208,261 | 13.4% |
| #27 | Victoria University | Australia | 73.4 | 6,554 | 95,074 | -3.4% |
| #28 | Central Queensland University | Australia | 73.2 | 9,253 | 95,651 | 40.6% |
| #29 | University of Canberra | Australia | 73.0 | 12,004 | 125,242 | 8.5% |
| #30 | Australian Catholic University | Australia | 72.4 | 7,853 | 93,776 | 6.9% |
| #31 | Charles Sturt University | Australia | 72.3 | 8,906 | 91,936 | 28.9% |
| #32 | University of the Sunshine Coast | Australia | 71.6 | 8,100 | 88,458 | 16.2% |
| #33 | Charles Darwin University | Australia | 71.5 | 8,164 | 83,870 | -3.7% |
| #34 | Torrens University Australia | Australia | 71.3 | 2,808 | 58,390 | 150.6% |
| #35 | University of New England | Australia | 71.3 | 5,654 | 66,198 | -17.5% |
| #36 | Federation University | Australia | 69.3 | 5,112 | 58,326 | -13.5% |
| #37 | Southern Cross University | Australia | 69.1 | 5,583 | 54,033 | 8.6% |
| #38 | Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society | Australia | 66.0 | 1,106 | 26,841 | 11.6% |
| #39 | The University of Notre Dame Australia | Australia | 65.9 | 4,892 | 41,079 | -2.2% |
| #40 | Australian Institute of Business | Australia | 64.7 | 719 | 10,869 | 84.8% |
| #41 | Australian College of Optometry | Australia | 61.1 | 715 | 7,959 | 19.1% |
| #42 | Australian Maritime College | Australia | 60.4 | 546 | 8,734 | -26.7% |
| #43 | Australian Defence Force Academy | Australia | 59.7 | 753 | 7,732 | -49.9% |
| #44 | Mount Stromlo Observatory | Australia | 58.1 | 314 | 5,591 | 43.7% |
| #45 | Vision Eye Institute | Australia | 57.8 | 443 | 4,399 | 41.8% |
| #46 | Sports Medicine Australia | Australia | 55.0 | 409 | 3,525 | 24.3% |
| #47 | New South Wales Institute of Psychiatry | Australia | 53.2 | 364 | 2,900 | 102.0% |
| #48 | Melbourne School of Theology | Australia | 52.9 | 333 | 4,267 | 76.5% |
| #49 | Melbourne Bioinformatics | Australia | 50.0 | 311 | 2,297 | -3.2% |
| #50 | Brisbane School of Theology | Australia | 49.6 | 208 | 4,141 | -37.5% |
| #51 | Australian College of Applied Psychology | Australia | 46.4 | 261 | 2,524 | 12.2% |
| #52 | Australian Council for Educational Research | Australia | 45.3 | 379 | 1,346 | 19.7% |
| #53 | Cairnmillar Institute | Australia | 45.2 | 271 | 2,045 | 41.7% |
| #54 | Centre for Remote Health | Australia | 44.8 | 596 | 1,750 | -84.1% |
| #55 | University of Divinity | Australia | 44.7 | 783 | 1,174 | 26.8% |
| #56 | Avondale University | Australia | 43.3 | 222 | 1,438 | 32.9% |
| #57 | Royal Australian College of General Practitioners | Australia | 42.9 | 334 | 1,078 | 63.1% |
| #58 | Royal Australasian College of Surgeons | Australia | 42.9 | 243 | 1,266 | -49.1% |
| #59 | Australian College of Nursing | Australia | 41.8 | 257 | 857 | 30.9% |
| #60 | Excelsia University College | Australia | 41.0 | 202 | 1,374 | -9.0% |
| #61 | Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education | Australia | 40.8 | 400 | 553 | 88.3% |
| #62 | Ridley College | Australia | 39.7 | 164 | 732 | 27.6% |
| #63 | Central Institute of Technology | Australia | 39.1 | 110 | 378 | 176.0% |
| #64 | Alphacrucis University College | Australia | 38.5 | 211 | 1,151 | 27.1% |
| #65 | Box Hill Institute | Australia | 37.4 | 102 | 584 | 24.2% |
| #66 | Alliance College of Australia | Australia | 37.1 | 126 | 592 | -36.7% |
| #67 | William Angliss Institute | Australia | 35.3 | 100 | 892 | -19.2% |
Research fields where Australia universities rank
Number of Australia universities in the top 100 of each ITS research-field ranking.
How ITS Research Score v3 is constructed
One formula applies to every index-ready institution, using the five most recent complete calendar years: 25% research output, 25% citations, 20% h-index and 5% i10-index (log-normalized so the largest universities do not dominate linearly), 15% citation impact (the institution’s percentile on citations per work, reduced below 500 works so small samples cannot win by chance), 5% publication growth and 5% international-collaboration share. When collaboration data is not yet available, the other weights are rescaled.
Data-quality controls: the unfinished current year is never counted, and a year in which recorded output jumps to more than three times the institution’s usual level while being at least 90% open access is treated as a bulk dataset or repository deposit and scored at the usual level. An affiliation check also removes institutions whose papers mostly do not name them in the author address (OpenAlex sometimes assigns a large university’s papers to a namesake school or college). Raw data are kept and every adjustment is logged. Open-access share and topic diversity are published as separate rankings and do not affect the main score. Citation impact is not field-normalized.
These indicators assess research activity only. They do not measure teaching quality, student experience, employability, reputation, finances or accreditation. Missing data are left missing rather than fabricated.