With the presence of representatives of the academic community, institutions and the business sector, the ARBU platform – Academic Ranking of Balkan Universities, the first regional academic ranking that includes universities from the entire Balkans and their scientific impact, was officially promoted today in Skopje.
ARBU represents the most comprehensive analysis of higher education in the region to date. The ranking includes 324 universities and higher education institutions from eight Balkan countries, more than 33,000 professors and researchers and over 19.7 million scientific citations registered on Google Scholar. Thus, for the first time, a single regional database has been created that allows for a direct comparison of the scientific performance of universities and researchers from the entire Balkans.
The project was created to provide greater transparency in higher education and to offer a clear picture of the scientific contribution of universities and researchers in the region, by measuring their scientific impact and citations.
The ranking uses a transparent and easily verifiable methodology based on scientific citations registered on Google Scholar. The data was collected and processed during 2025 and provides an objective insight into the scientific impact of institutions and individuals throughout the region.
The first results show that the universities from Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia have the greatest scientific impact in the region. At the top of the list is the University of Zagreb, followed by the University of Belgrade and the University of Ljubljana. These three institutions represent the core of scientific research production in the Balkans and together accumulate more than nine million scientific citations.
According to the results on Macedonia, the Skopje University of Sts. Cyril and Methodius (UKIM) is the best-ranked university in the country and a leader in the largest number of scientific fields. At the same time, the analysis shows a significant gap between Macedonian and leading regional universities. While the UKIM has around 400 thousand citations, the University of Zagreb has more than 4.6 million citations, and the universities of Belgrade and Ljubljana have over two million citations each.
