The University of Kentucky was listed among the nation’s top 20 public research universities in a new national ranking based on faculty scholarly output.

UK was tied for 19th among public universities and tied for 41st among all universities in a rating of faculty scholarly activity in almost 7,300 doctoral programs nationwide.

Two UK departments were ranked No. 1 nationally in their fields — Hispanic studies and plant pathology. Both have enjoyed strong national reputations over several decades.

The 2005 Faculty Scholarly Activity Index, as the ranking is formally called, was published in the Jan. 12 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education. The new national ranking was based on the number of published books and articles, in addition to the number of times faculty research was cited in journal articles. The rating also took into account awards, honors and grants that faculty received.

UK Provost Kumble Subbaswamy said in a news release that this method of ranking universities “underscores the importance of faculty scholarship and demonstrates the breadth and depth of quality” among UK’s faculty and departments.

But he also noted that UK’s effort to become a Top 20 public research university will depend on other factors such as student academic quality, improved graduation rates and lower student-faculty ratios.

The General Assembly established UK’s Top 20 goal in Kentucky’s higher education reforms of 1997.

The new index did not include the oft-used ranking by departmental reputation, which is inherently subjective but also highly influential when faculty consider job offers and recommend where their students should go for graduate study.

The new ranking put five other UK departments in the top 10 in their respective fields: anatomy (No. 3); nursing (No.9); counseling psychology (No. 9), educational psychology (No. 10) and entomology (No. 10).

Harvard was ranked No. 1 among all universities. Tied at No. 2 were the California Institute of Technology and the University of California at San Francisco. Then came No. 4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology; No. 5 Yale University; No. 6 Carnegie Mellon University; No. 7 Washington University in St. Louis; No. 8 Vanderbilt University; No. 9 Johns Hopkins University; and No. 10 Duke University.

UC San Francisco, a medical center that includes hospital care, education in the health professions and life sciences research, was the top public university.

Following it, in order, were: UC Berkeley, University of Wisconsin at Madison, University of Washington, University of Virginia, SUNY at Stony Brook, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Pennsylvania State University, UC San Diego, University of Maryland at College Park, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, City University of New York Graduate Center, University of Iowa, Michigan State University, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara and UC Davis.

UK was tied with UC Davis at 41st overall and 19th among public universities.

Other public universities in Top 50 overall were, in order: UC Irvine, University of Illinois at Chicago, Indiana University at Bloomington, Purdue University, UC Riverside and University of Texas at Austin.

The study was paid for in part by the State University of New York at Stony Brook and was compiled by Academic Analytics, a private company.

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