DESPITE SLIPPING in most subjects, the University of Santo Tomas retained its spot as the sixth among 344 Philippine schools and research institutions in the 2026 Alper-Doger (AD) Scientific Index.
In the latest edition of the assessment, UST drew lower rankings in the majority of the 14 assessed subjects, including history, philosophy and theology, where it previously ranked first.
The España-based university managed to improve its worldwide ranking to 5421st from 5,483rd, but among Asian institutions, it fell to 1,831st from 1,807th last year.
The University of the Philippines (UP) remained the country’s top institution, placing 1,804th worldwide. It was followed by the International Rice Research Institute (2,296th), De La Salle University (DLSU) Manila (2,375th), the University of the Philippines Diliman (3,525th) and the Ateneo de Manila University (3,622nd).
UST outperformed the University of the Philippines Los Baños (7,505th), Cebu Technological University (7,636th), University of the Philippines Manila (7,693rd) and the PAU Excellencia Global Academy Foundation Inc. (8,163rd).
However, it lost its spot as the best Philippine institution in terms of history, philosophy and theology research, only ranking fifth out of 57 in this year’s edition.
The Ateneo de Manila University now stands as the top Philippine institution in the subject, followed by DLSU Manila, Ateneo de Davao University and UP.
UST also fell in seven other subjects of the assessment, all of which drew higher participants this year:
-
Engineering & Technology (18th from 16th)
-
Agriculture & Forestry (26th from 21st)
-
Economics & Econometrics (16th from 14th)
-
Education (16th from 14th)
-
Social Sciences (13th from 10th)
-
Social Sciences and Humanities (31st from 24th)
-
Arts & Humanities (ninth from fifth)
Nevertheless, the University improved in Medical and Health Sciences (third from fourth), Natural Sciences (seventh from ninth) and Business & Management (17th from 20th), despite a slightly higher number of ranked institutions in the subjects.
Meanwhile, UST obtained the same ranking in Architecture and Design at ninth place and the “Others” category, which includes no researcher profile and unidentified fields, at fourth place. It again received no ranking for Law.
Among the 312 ranked Philippines universities, UST stayed at fifth spot for the third consecutive year.
A total of 448 staff members from the University were evaluated, with two of its researchers included in the top 10% of scientists worldwide, 19 in the top 30% and 78 in the top 50%.
Prof. Raymond Rosales from the Research Center for Health Sciences was ranked the number one Thomasian researcher.
Based on the number of total citations, UST also remained sixth among universities in the country.
The institutions were assessed at both individual and institutional levels using performance data on the total number of published papers, citations and scientists in each subject, referred to as their H-index score.
This year’s AD Scientific Index featured a total of 24,504 institutions and universities, higher than the 24,325 assessed last year.
Harvard University was deemed the best school in terms of research overall, followed by the Universidade de São Paulo USP, the University of Michigan, Stanford University and the University of Oxford. F
