In July 2026, the Ranking Web of Universities (Webometrics) published a new ranking of the world top universities, covering 32 000+ institutions from over 200 countries.

In the overall world ranking, the top three are traditionally represented by Harvard and Stanford universities (USA), as well as the University of Oxford (UK). A total of 962 Russian universities are represented in the ranking, among which the first place is occupied by Lomonosov Moscow State University (207^th in the world ranking).

According to the updated Webometrics ranking, Irkutsk State University took 3056^th  place in the world, 48^th place in Russia (the highest position since 2020) and 1207^th place in Asia, demonstrating significant progress across all indicators. In the Impact Rank, ISU took 2260^th place (1487 positions up since last year), in the Openness Rank – 3726^th (3047 positions up), in the Excellence Rank – 2170^th (2612 positions up), which indicates a significant growth in the university’s international visibility and scientific influence.

In addition to ISU, the Irkutsk Region is also represented in the ranking by Irkutsk National Research Technical University – 69^th in Russia (3897^th in the world ranking), Baikal State University – 167^th (6248^th), Irkutsk State Transport University – 251^st (7511^th), Irkutsk State Agrarian University named after A.A. Ezhevsky  – 276^th (7939^th), Irkutsk State Medical University – 321^st (8478^th).

The Webometrics ranking is considered one of the most respectable. It analyzes the university’s presence on the Internet. The evaluation system is based not on the number of visits and page design, but on the entirety of the university’s representation on the web, which provides a comprehensive picture of the university, its network activity and the online presence of its faculty, staff and students. The ranking also makes it possible to indirectly assess the research achievements of universities by comparing their websites.

The ranking takes into account three indicators:

• Visibility (50%): impact based on number of external referring domains (Ahrefs.com);
• Transparency (10%): citations from top 310 cited researchers (excluding top 20 outliers) (Google Scholar Profiles);
• Excellence (40%) – research papers in the top 10% most cited (Scopus/Scimago).