[1][2] Since 2009, ARWU has been published and copyrighted annually by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, an organization focusing on higher education that is not legally subordinated to any universities or government agencies.

"[16] A survey on higher education published by The Economist in 2005 commented ARWU as "the most widely used annual ranking of the world's research universities.

[9][22][23][24] A 2007 paper published in the journal Scientometrics found that the results from the Shanghai rankings could not be reproduced from raw data using the method described by Liu and Cheng.

ARWU has been criticised by the European Commission as well as some EU member states for "favour[ing] Anglo-Saxon higher education institutions".

For instance, ARWU is repeatedly criticised in France, where it triggers an annual controversy, focusing on its ill-adapted character to the French academic system[28][29] and the unreasonable weight given to research often performed decades ago.

The methodology is similar to that adopted in the overall table, including award factors, paper citation, and the number of highly cited scholars.