Raising doubts over the soundness of the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, private institutions, including Galgotias University and Amity University, have scored higher than the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru on the “research quality” parameter of the global survey.
IISc, which is one of the country’s foremost research institutions, was placed 64th among 143 Indian institutions on research quality, with a score of 51.5.
Galgotias University in Greater Noida scored 67 and ranked 23rd. Amity University, Noida, scored 76.9 and ranked 12th. Saveetha University topped the Indian list on the indicator with a score of 95.1, followed by Graphic Era at 93.6 and Chitkara at 87.1, Hindustan Times reported.
Research quality accounts for 30% of the overall ranking, making it the most heavily weighted of THE’s five performance pillars. The 23rd edition of the UK-based ranking covers 2,297 universities across 118 countries and territories. Institutions are assessed on 17 performance indicators across five broad areas: teaching, research environment, research quality, international outlook and industry impact.
India’s research community has criticised the results, particularly over the extent to which citation-based metrics reflect the quality and integrity of research.
“The Research Quality parameter of THE rankings has been called out for the absurd results since 2024. After defending their methodology for the last two years, they have finally announced some minor changes to the methodology from next year,” said Achal Agrawal, founder of India Research Watch, which regularly flags research misconduct in India.
“However, they have still not acted upon penalising institutes with clear misconduct as evidenced by retractions. Many of the institutes doing well in research quality also have some of the highest numbers of retractions in the world.”
Galgotias’s position on the research-quality indicator has drawn attention amid questions over its research credentials.
In February 2026, the university was asked to withdraw from the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi after it was found displaying a commercially available, Chinese-manufactured robotic dog as a product developed at its own centre of excellence. The university apologised for the episode, attributing it to a staff member who was unaware of the product’s origins.
The incident brought renewed attention to the university’s patent record. Since its founding in 2011, Galgotias has filed 2,297 patent applications until 2024-25, exceeding the corresponding figures for IIT Bombay (1,646), IIT Madras (1,782) and IIT Kanpur (939).
However, only 24 of Galgotias’s applications were granted patents, a success rate of approximately 1%. In 2022-23 alone, the university filed 1,089 applications, more than the combined number by all IITs that year.