Universidad Nacional de Colombia Ranked Among the Best Universities in Latin America

The Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil was placed first, followed by the Universidad Autónoma de México and the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, from Brazil. In the world ranking, the Universidade de São Paulo ranked 53th, while the Universidad Nacional de Colombia ranked 594th.

CSIC is the first public research organism form Spain, it has 130 centers, a libraries network, more than 6000 investigators and an internationally recognized university press.

Isidro Aguillo, CSIC"s cybermetrics lab responsible, pointed out in a Universidad Nacional de Colombia radio program UN Análisis: "the purpose of this ranking is to motivate universities to publish their information into the Web - the first scientific communication platform-.

According to Aguillo, "Colombian universities are slightly under the World level, but they are progressing and have a strong competitor: Brazil. In view of these circumstances there are two options: to compete in order to surpass them or to improve the cooperation with this country".

 "It is very important for our countries that all the research results, provided services, classes, and in general all university efforts in Spanish language are represented at a world level through this virtual platform", said Aguillo.

Two criteria are basically used for this ranking. "The first is the amount of publishing and its presence on the Web. A low presence might reflect bad quality of the institution independently of teachers and researchers performance. The second criterion is the amount of links to the university posted by scientist. It is an effective way to measure each university"s quantity and quality of work.

Aguillo concluded that science and research, being so connected with industry innovation, are fundamental to the development; they are the way out of the crisis. Budget reduction is not an option.