The ICR has ranked in the top 30 higher education institutions in the world for research in an independent evaluation funded by the European Commission.
It scored particularly highly in measures of interaction with commercial partners, including top in the world for the percentage of publications cited in patents.
The assessment, from U-Multirank, scored higher education institutions in a number of categories, including the quality of their research and their 'knowledge transfer' – which measures their collaboration with industry and contribution to patents.
Read case studies of how the ICR's Enterprise Unit has collaborated with a range of industrial partners to transform ideas into new products for the benefit of cancer patients.
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The ICR was ranked 30th out of more than 1,200 higher education institutions worldwide.
We ranked fourth in the world for the proportion of publications that are highly cited – with over 25 per cent of our publications reaching the top 10 per cent of frequently cited articles in their field.
We also came fifth for the number of papers cited in other research.
Frequent citations are a measure of international research excellence, and indicate that publications play an important and influential role in academic discussions.
In terms of knowledge transfer, the ICR was ranked first in the world for the percentage of publications that are cited in patents – a measure of how innovative our research is.
We also came fifth worldwide, and first in the UK, for the proportion of publications that feature an industry co-author – highlighting our strong links with commercial partners.
Independent ranking
The U-Multirank system focuses on showing top performances in different aspects of research. It is an independent ranking launched in 2014 with funding by the European Commission's Erasmus+ programme.
One of its purposes is to throw a spotlight on high-performing universities that might not be picked up by traditional international university rankings.
Some of the more established international systems have a bias towards the bigger universities and can overlook specialist institutions like the ICR – although we are top in the definitive UK measure of research excellence at UK institutes, the REF.
Research quality recognised
Dr Angela Kukula, Director of Enterprise at the ICR, said: "I'm pleased to see that these rankings endorse the ICR's position as one of the most successful academic research institutions in the world.
"The fact that we rank near the top not only for the quality of our research papers, but also for the translation of our research and our success at collaborating with industry, is a sign of our focus on making effective collaborations, to ensure that people with cancer benefit as quickly as possible from our discoveries."