First place to the UK in global list of academic research
The US came third and China 19th, out of 130 countries comparing 25 metrics.
The list is compiled by measuresHE Analytics, a global higher education data and intelligence organisation.
Europe was seen to dominate the country rankings, which were measured against metrics that included research quality, international integration, sustainability, academic integrity and systemic investment.
MeasuresHE ranked the UK first place, with an overall score of 92.9, while the Netherlands recorded the highest research quality score at 96.1.
Sweden finished fourth, Denmark 16th, Norway 17th and Finland 20th. The analytics company says this reinforces the same conclusion - that small, highly funded, tightly regulated public university systems consistently outperform larger, more famous rivals on every systemic measure.
Meanwhile, Germany came seventh, Switzerland eighth, Italy 10th, Belgium 11th, Spain 12th and France 15th.
There is European dominance of the global top 20, which was inferred to support the continent's model of publicly funded, quality-assured higher education.
