Irkutsk State University entered the most prestigious world rankings of the best universities, which is published annually by the British magazine Times Higher Education. The global ranking includes 60 Russian universities (last year 48), among them ISU is ranked 24th.

Professor Alexander Schmidt, ISU Rector: 

- It is crucial that Irkutsk State University is included in the THE ranking for the second year in a row. This indicates that ISU's inclusion in the ranking and the place it occupies among Russian universities is not accidental. Despite the debate regarding numerous university rankings, there is no doubt that this is a very high assessment of the university's performance over the past 5 years.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings is one of the most authoritative world university rankings. This ranking is officially recognized by the Government of the Russian Federation and was the basis for assessing the effectiveness of universities in the 5-100 program. The ranking is currently compiled in partnership with Elsevier and the Scopus database. Thus, one of the key parameters for the University to be included into the ranking is the publication of at least 1,000 scientific articles in five years in journals indexed in the Scopus database, supported by Elsevier.

The ranking analyses 13 performance indicators grouped into five areas: teaching, research, citation, research commercialization and international engagement. The rating is significantly influenced by the analysis of more than 80 million citations from 13 million scientific publications, as well as a survey of 22,000 scientists from all over the world.