The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was first published in June 2003 by the Center for World-Class Universities (CWCU), Graduate School of Education (formerly the Institute of Higher Education) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and updated on an annual basis. Since 2009 the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has been published and copyrighted by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy. ShanghaiRanking Consultancy is a fully independent organization on higher education intelligence and not legally subordinated to any universities or government agencies.
ARWU uses six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Clarivate Analytics, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance of a university. More than 1800 universities are actually ranked by ARWU every year and the best 1000 are published.
Although the initial purpose of ARWU was to find the global standing of top Chinese universities, it has attracted a great deal of attention from universities, governments and public media worldwide. ARWU has been reported by mainstream media in almost all major countries. 

It is an annual ranking of universities published by Times Higher Education magazine, which was collaborating with some startup companies to do the QS World University Rankings from 2004 to 2009 before the magazine turned to cooperate with Thomson Reuters in publishing the new ranking system. The magazine is currently working on publishing a report that includes the best international universities with other rankings, which are the best universities in Asia, Latin America, and then the best universities in countries with emerging economies.
The classification has gained great popularity and is widely relied upon in order to evaluate universities at the global level along with the Academic Ranking of World Universities as well as the QS World University Rankings by 2010; The Times magazine improved and developed its classification and tried to include a good number of universities in the world instead of relying on only English-speaking or even those in developed countries only.

It is an annual ranking of the best 800 universities in the world published by Quacquarelli Symonds, the education company.