How to rank schools of public health? The PHAR project

Abstract Background Since the shattering and abrupt withdrawal of several Ivy League universities from ranking systems in 2022, the debate on rankings has been raging in the academic world and beyond. Despite this, rankings have undeniable advantages and continue to be used on a daily basis by a variety of stakeholders. As a previous work has demonstrated that there is no ranking specifically designed for schools of public health, the aim of this project was to create one. Methods To create the Public Health Academic Ranking (PHAR), the InCites Benchmarking and Analytics™ software and the Web Of Science™ Core Collection database were employed. Bibliometric data on 26 schools of public health, from each continent, were collected between August and September 2022. Eleven research indicators and scores, covering four criteria (productivity, quality, accessibility for readers, international collaboration), for the period 2017-2021, were used. For some schools whose affiliation was not mentioned directly in the software, a specific methodology was designed and tested, with unique research queries applied to the database. Results The five top schools of the PHAR were: the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Conclusions The PHAR provides an international bibliometric ranking of schools of public health. As this is a pilot project, the results should be taken with caution and future improvements should be developed. Key messages • The PHAR is the first university ranking system specifically designed for schools of public health and focuses on the research field of this discipline. • The PHAR makes it possible to rank schools of public health with an unusual structure (such as the PHFI and the SSPH+), which are generally overlooked by traditional rankings.