Singapore University Research Rankings
Compare Singapore universities using recent research output, citation impact, growth and a transparent research-performance score.
Research landscape
The current ITS Research Intelligence dataset contains 30 index-ready universities in Singapore. Across those institutions, the average five-year research output is approximately 6,671 works and the average five-year citation count is approximately 115,330. The average publication-growth signal is 26.2%. 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 Singapore
| Rank | University | Country | Score | 5-year works | 5-year citations | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | National University of Singapore | Singapore | 88.3 | 86,173 | 1,472,459 | 16.8% |
| #2 | Nanyang Technological University | Singapore | 86.9 | 59,190 | 1,078,171 | 21.4% |
| #3 | Duke-NUS Medical School | Singapore | 77.3 | 11,780 | 178,953 | 5.2% |
| #4 | National University Health System | Singapore | 77.0 | 9,852 | 170,748 | 1.3% |
| #5 | Singapore University of Technology and Design | Singapore | 74.6 | 6,516 | 119,879 | 5.8% |
| #6 | Singapore Management University | Singapore | 72.3 | 7,831 | 77,197 | 48.8% |
| #7 | National University Cancer Institute, Singapore | Singapore | 71.8 | 2,704 | 65,714 | 1.3% |
| #8 | Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology | Singapore | 67.5 | 1,162 | 22,424 | -34.2% |
| #9 | Singapore University of Social Sciences | Singapore | 66.8 | 2,170 | 30,390 | 33.7% |
| #10 | Singapore Institute of Technology | Singapore | 64.8 | 4,095 | 27,380 | 103.1% |
| #11 | James Cook University Singapore | Singapore | 61.6 | 962 | 10,584 | 43.8% |
| #12 | Yale-NUS College | Singapore | 61.3 | 993 | 12,630 | -57.3% |
| #13 | Academy of Medicine | Singapore | 60.0 | 321 | 125,551 | 71.1% |
| #14 | Newcastle University Singapore | Singapore | 59.8 | 510 | 6,932 | 1.4% |
| #15 | Ngee Ann Polytechnic | Singapore | 59.6 | 368 | 16,875 | -76.8% |
| #16 | Republic Polytechnic | Singapore | 57.9 | 535 | 3,423 | 192.9% |
| #17 | Raffles Institution | Singapore | 55.8 | 408 | 4,907 | 49.2% |
| #18 | INSEAD | Singapore | 55.6 | 358 | 5,836 | -35.0% |
| #19 | A*STAR Graduate Academy | Singapore | 54.9 | 602 | 3,679 | 7.7% |
| #20 | Nanyang Polytechnic | Singapore | 54.8 | 403 | 4,084 | 1.3% |
| #21 | Singapore Polytechnic | Singapore | 53.8 | 292 | 4,508 | 10.3% |
| #22 | East Asia School of Theology | Singapore | 53.6 | 850 | 4,730 | 29.6% |
| #23 | Institute of Technical Education | Singapore | 52.1 | 867 | 2,911 | 128.8% |
| #24 | Temasek Polytechnic | Singapore | 48.4 | 249 | 2,196 | 75.0% |
| #25 | Singapore College of Traditional Chinese Medicine | Singapore | 43.7 | 180 | 2,197 | -54.4% |
| #26 | Hwa Chong Institution | Singapore | 42.9 | 184 | 3,504 | 3.0% |
| #27 | University of Glasgow Singapore | Singapore | 37.7 | 121 | 1,020 | -66.7% |
| #28 | LASALLE College of the Arts | Singapore | 37.1 | 216 | 340 | 30.3% |
| #29 | Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts | Singapore | 36.5 | 128 | 396 | 32.0% |
| #30 | United World College of South East Asia | Singapore | 34.3 | 124 | 293 | 196.2% |
Research fields where Singapore universities rank
Number of Singapore 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.