Canada’s top research universities: StFX ranks second in country in research publication impact 

The impact and quality of research at St. Francis Xavier University has again been recognized nationally as StFX has moved up to second place in Canada in research publication impact. 

The most recent Research Infosource rankings of Canada’s Top 50 Research Universities 2022 was released Jan. 18, 2023, where StFX continues to be among Canada’s Top 50 Research Universities, according to Research Infosource Inc., a leading research, consulting, and publishing firm that specializes in the areas of policy, research, business intelligence and analysis on science, technology, innovation, and the Canadian R&D ecosystem. 

Impressively, StFX ranked second in Canada (with the second highest score behind only University of Toronto) in the research publication category—a measure of the quality and impact of research published by StFX faculty—and 41st overall (the same standing as last year) in the overall scorecard. The full table can be found at: 

StFX also moved up to 48th place overall from 49th place in research income (overall rankings). 

Dr. Richard Isnor, StFX Associate Vice President Research and Graduate Studies says the research publication category is one that StFX has done consistently well in, placing in the top six during the last three years, and for a small university, is a particular accomplishment, coming ahead of much larger, research-intensive universities. 

The research publication category is defined as follows: Publication Impact (10%) Points are based on the Average Relative Impact Factor (ARIF), which was developed and provided by the Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST). It is based on a measure of the perceived impact of research through a calculation of citations received by journals. The impact factor does not measure the specific number of citations per article (direct impact), but rather, a measure of the probability of being cited (perceived impact). OST developed the ARIF to compare the impact factor from several specialties because an article’s probability of being cited is not the same for all fields. The ARIF does not include journals on the Humanities field. To ensure that the ARIF score was meaningful, any university with less than 125 publications was not allocated points. Rankings were based on ARIF scores for 2020 (the latest final data available). Impact data were obtained from Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (Clarivate Analytics – Web of Science).