Webometrics rankings penalize several Greek universities

The July 2026 edition of the Webometrics university rankings has introduced significant changes for Greek higher education. While seven Greek universities maintained positions within the global top 1,000, several institutions faced penalties.

Eleven of Greece's 24 public universities have been “blocked” from official results. This includes the Technical University of Crete and ELMEPA. These sanctions were imposed due to academic integrity concerns, specifically regarding institutions promoting unsubstantiated data from predatory clone websites.

The 2026 ranking methodology has also undergone a fundamental shift. Moving away from Google Scholar-based citation counts used in 2025, the new system utilizes the OpenAlex database. This updated approach focuses on research quality by measuring the number of scientific papers that fall within the global top 1% or top 10% of most-cited publications for the 2021–2025 period.