ITS Research Intelligence

Lithuania University Research Rankings

Compare Lithuania universities using recent research output, citation impact, growth and a transparent research-performance score.

Research landscape

The current ITS Research Intelligence dataset contains 26 index-ready universities in Lithuania. Across those institutions, the average five-year research output is approximately 1,716 works and the average five-year citation count is approximately 13,173. The average publication-growth signal is 56.5%. 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 Lithuania

Rank	University	Country	Score	5-year works	5-year citations	Growth
#1	Vilnius University	Lithuania	72.5	14,378	119,110	17.6%
#2	Kaunas University of Technology	Lithuania	69.6	5,598	62,804	3.6%
#3	Lithuanian University of Health Sciences	Lithuania	67.2	5,121	41,005	20.6%
#4	Vilnius Gediminas Technical University	Lithuania	65.6	4,590	36,508	20.1%
#5	Vytautas Magnus University	Lithuania	64.1	4,602	34,339	10.6%
#6	Klaipėda University	Lithuania	60.1	1,703	12,584	25.7%
#7	Mykolas Romeris University	Lithuania	57.6	1,728	11,667	-9.9%
#8	Lithuanian Sports University	Lithuania	56.9	939	6,407	33.8%
#9	Vilnius University of Applied Sciences	Lithuania	53.3	1,103	4,172	143.6%
#10	ISM University of Management and Economics	Lithuania	45.5	234	2,136	17.4%
#11	Kazimieras Simonavičius University	Lithuania	45.3	367	1,341	74.8%
#12	Kauno kolegija Higher Education Institution	Lithuania	45.1	1,010	1,648	107.6%
#13	Šiauliai University	Lithuania	43.1	374	1,502	-19.4%
#14	Kaunas University of Applied Engineering Sciences	Lithuania	42.9	257	884	250.0%
#15	Vilnius College of Technologies and Design	Lithuania	42.0	271	1,687	-11.5%
#16	Klaipėdos valstybinė kolegija / Higher Education Institution	Lithuania	40.7	316	1,104	116.7%
#17	Lithuanian Institute of History	Lithuania	38.6	387	832	-20.1%
#18	Vilnius Business College	Lithuania	38.3	206	639	86.7%
#19	Utenos kolegija Higher Education Institution	Lithuania	37.6	137	487	112.1%
#20	European Humanities University	Lithuania	36.7	269	318	67.1%
#21	Šiauliai State Higher Education Institution	Lithuania	34.8	218	268	269.7%
#22	International Business School at Vilnius University	Lithuania	33.8	108	307	83.3%
#23	LCC International University	Lithuania	33.2	183	386	14.9%
#24	SMK University of Applied Social Sciences	Lithuania	31.7	199	203	-15.8%
#25	Vilnius Academy of Arts	Lithuania	28.9	186	136	-3.9%
#26	Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre	Lithuania	25.5	139	32	75.0%

Research fields where Lithuania universities rank

Number of Lithuania universities in the top 100 of each ITS research-field ranking.

Decision Sciences (1)

Transparent methodology

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.