(cm) ETH continues to distinguish itself by reaching a high place in university rankings. Once again, this year the university takes place 5 in Europe and place 27 in the worldwide ranking. So much is clear from the latest university ranking (1) ,which was published this month by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

In global comparison it is noticeable that Harvard University maintains its top position but that on ranks 2 and 3 the Stanford University and the University of Cambridge in the UK swap positions. Despite this advance of the Brits the dominance of US universities is still striking; they fill 8 of the 10 top places.

If one looks at universities outside the Anglo-Saxon sphere, the best are the universities of Tokyo, at place 14, and Kyoto at 21. The next university according to this criteria is ETH Zurich, and, accordingly, maintains its number 1 place within Switzerland. The universities of Zurich and Basle are also under the top 100 of the world's universities, at place 57 and 91, respectively.

As in last year's ranking, awarded Nobel prizes and Fields Medals were taken into account, the publications Science and Nature were given a special weight, as well as the size of the institution.

If one removes awards from the equation and measures publishing activity differently, the results, not surprisingly, change accordingly. In a ranking based on the web domains of universities, used by the authors of the Shanghai ranking as a source (2) , while ETH Zurich, for example, still appears at place 28, in this "webometric" approach the University of Oxford falls from place 10 to place 27.