Karolinska is the top ranking Swedish university, coming in at 43 on the world list and 9 on the European list of the Times Higher Education supplement rankings for 2010-2011.

Other Swedish universities featuring on the list include Lund University, Stockholm University, Uppsala University, the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences at 89, 129, 147, 193 and 199 respectively.

The list is dominated by US and UK universities with Harvard University coming out on top of the rankings which have been published for the seventh consecutive year. The California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and Princeton University make up the top five with the UK’s Cambridge and Oxford coming in at sixth and seventh respectively.

The Times Higher Education rankings are developed in partnership with Thomson Reuters and reported that the methodology applied for compiling the lists has been overhauled for this year.

To compile the study the publication collects input from 50 experts in the higher education field from 15 countries and ranks according to five headline categories: teaching, research, citations, industry income and international mix (of students and staff).

The results are displayed in rankings divided into six world regions and six subject areas. Karolinska Institute is once of only two Swedish university to feature in the top 50 universities according to subject area, coming in 21 among the top “Clinical, pre-clinical and health universities worldwide.

Lund University features at 43 in the list of top “Life sciences” universities and 46 on the list of top universities for “Physical science”.