News

Global research ranking success and accolades

 ACU’s continued success in international research rankings is testament to its commitment to excellence in priority areas.

Eight of our academics have been named on the annual Highly Cited Researchers 2021 list from Clarivate, announced on Tuesday 16 November 2021. The ACU academics listed are:

• Professor Mark J. Nieuwenhuijsen, Professor Herb Marsh, Professor David Penn, Professor Richard Ryan (Psychiatry and Psychology)
• Professor David Dunstan, Professor John Kanis, Professor Ester Cerin (Cross-Field)
• Professor Jim Sallis (Social Sciences)

The highly anticipated annual list identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade. Their names are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1 per cent by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science citation index.

This latest result follows the recent Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2022 subject rankings for psychology placing ACU in the top 150 overall and seventh in the world for our research citations.

Similarly, in education, ACU ranked 27th in the world and second in Australia on the measure of citations in the field.

Globally, the university is among the top 250 universities, and in the top six Catholic universities for arts and humanities. These achievements also highlight the important strategic direction that ACU has taken to build our reputation as a leading Catholic university.

Recently, The Australian’s Research Magazine 2021 commended Institute for Positive Psychology and Education (IPPE) Professor Ryan in the lifetime achievement category, for his world-leading achievements in social psychology.

IPPE Professor Marsh and Dean of Graduate Research Professor Philip Parker were recognised for lifetime achievement for research in educational psychology and Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education's Dr Jessica Holloway was recognised as research field leader for educational administration.

ACU Interim Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise) Professor James McLaren congratulated all researchers involved in the ranking results and commendations.

“The public recognition of ACU’s high quality research is testimony to the sustained commitment of our staff to pursuing excellence in all of our research activities.”