A listing of the top-ranked institutions in Australia and New Zealand just published on the UK site Times Higher Education placed Macquarie University in the top spot for environmental sciences and ecology research.

The list, which was put together using the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters, ranked institutions based on the citation impact of journal articles published over the last decade. Macquarie appeared on the list in the number one spot locally and ranked as number 14 in the world.

According to the article Macquarie appears to be leading a trend in environmental sciences and ecology research that has emerged as a ‘strongly improving area for Australia and New Zealand’. The article pointed to Australia’s overall citation impact increasing to 23 per cent above the world average in the past decade as evidence of this trend. According to the article Australian universities hold a larger world share of papers in this field and influence of such papers has risen significantly over this period.

Professor Stephen Thurgate Executive Dean, Faculty of Science at Macquarie University said of the results, ‘The future of the environment has long been a priority for the talented researchers in the Faculty of Science at Macquarie. We are delighted to see their contribution reflected in the rankings. This achievement further illustrates the quality of research and teaching we are developing at Macquarie’.