2017 KUBS Worldwide Business Research Rankings released

The rankings are based on analyses of more than 40,000 publications from 86 distinguished business journals.

The University of Pennsylvania ranked No. 1, followed by Erasmus University, and the University of Michigan.

KUBS moved up three places to 71, becoming the only business school in Korea to be ranked in the top 100.

On Thursday October 19, The Center for Business Research Analytics at Korea University Business School (Dean Soo Young Kwon) released the 2017 Korea University Business School Worldwide Business Research Rankings™ (hereafter KUBS Rankings).

The University of Pennsylvania continued to be ranked first in the world, followed by Erasmus University and the University of Michigan. In Asia, the City University of Hong Kong (No. 5) and the National University of Singapore (No. 6) were in the top 10, while the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (No. 18) ranked in the top 20. Among universities in Korea, Korea University ranked in 71st position and was the one and only university to be placed in the top 100, followed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (111st), Seoul National University (179th), and Yonsei University (204th). KU continued to be ranked No. 1 in Korea, placing itself within the top 10 in Asia.

The KUBS Rankings, released each autumn, are based on analyses of over 40,000 publications listed in 86 distinguished business journals. It is an evaluation index which shows the research capabilities of business schools throughout the world. The rankings include Worldwide Rankings (as an overall index), Rankings by Academic Area, and Rankings by Journal. The areas indicate seven research areas of business studies: Accounting, Finance, Management, Management Information Systems (MIS), Marketing, Operations Management & Management Science (OM/MS), and International Business (IB) & Strategy. To make the 2017 Rankings, five years of publication data from 2012 to 2016 were collected. The top 300 universities were decided based on the sum of converted scores which reflect the number of authors and their affiliations.

According to this year’s release, KU moved up three places to 74th and KAIST vaulted 28 places from 139th in 2016. Seoul National University and Yonsei University, on the other hand, both fell compared to last year’s rankings.

The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) Rankings, which are currently used most widely in the field of management as an index of faculty research productivity, are compiled based on a database of 24 journals. On the other hand, the KUBS Rankings conduct analyses on a broader scope of data in order to evaluate the research capabilities of business schools worldwide in an effort to provide a more practical evaluation and prevent universities in the European and Asian regions from being unfairly undervalued.

Soo Young Kwon, Dean of Korea University Business School said, “To make the KUBS Rankings robust and reliable, we conducted evaluations based on a database covering all publications from prestigious journals in the field of business. Through the KUBS Rankings, we hope to see world famous business schools come together where they can be recognized for their outstanding research achievements as they compete with a spirit of goodwill for further developments in the field of business.”

The Worldwide Rankings and further details on the rankings are available online at kubsrankings.korea.ac.kr.