Dr. Khaled Abed El-Ghaffar, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, received a report on the inclusion of five Egyptian universities in the Shanghai Ranking for the year 2020, which are: Cairo ranked (401-500), followed by Alexandria (701-800), Ain Shams (801-900), Mansoura (801-900), and Zagazig (901-1000).

The report indicates the emergence of 15 Egyptian universities in some scientific disciplines in the medical, natural sciences, engineering, life sciences and social sciences sector in this ranking, which are: (Cairo, Alexandria, Ain Shams, Mansoura, Zagazig, Assiut, Aswan, Al-Azhar, Beni Suef, Suez Canal, Kafrelsheikh, Fayoum, Minya, Sadat City, and the British University in Egypt).

As well, Dr. Adel Abed El-Ghaffar, Media Adviser and Official Spokesperson for the Ministry, states that the international rankings of universities depend on different variables in the ranking as the Shanghai ranking depends on several criteria: the number of university graduates who won the Nobel Prize (10%), the number of staff members who won the Nobel Prize (20%), the number of highly citation scientists (20%), the number of papers included in Clarvet databases (20%), the number of papers published in Nature journals (20%), the balance in staff members in different science sectors (10%), and the Spanish (Scimago) is concerned with ranking universities and research centers according to a composite index that combines three different indicators based on research performance (50%), innovation outputs (30%), and societal impact (20%), and each major indicator includes a number of sub-indicators, provided that the institution publishes at least 100 papers in the SCOPUS database in the year of evaluation.

Dr. Adel Abed El-Ghaffar adds that the progress of Egyptian universities in the various international rankings is due to several measures that have taken place during the past period, the most important of which are: the technical support provided by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research to Egyptian universities, training on international publishing, in addition to what universities are doing to motivate researchers of all academic degrees for publication in prestigious international journals, and the distinguished ratings granted to internationally published scientific researches in the work of scientific promotion committees.