Importance and Interactions of World Universities from 24 Wikipedia editions

We present the Wikipedia Ranking of World Universities (WRWU) produced from the analysis of the directed networks constituted by Wikipedia hyperlinked articles [1,2]. We used PageRank, CheiRank and 2DRank algorithms to rank the articles of 24 Wikipedia language editions (EN, SV, DE, NL, FR, RU, IT, ES, PL, VI, JA, PT, ZH, FA, AR, HU, KO, TR, MS, DA, HE, EL, HI, TH) representing about 60% of the total articles in Wikipedia extracted in 2013 and 2017. This approach allows to take into account various cultural points of view on world universities using a statistical analysis independent of any cultural preference. The top 100 of WRWU retrieves about 60% of the top 100 of Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) stressing the reliability of the method [1,2]. Apart measuring academic excellence, as the knowledge gathered in 24 Wikipedia language editions is considered, WRWU highlights also historically, socially and/or regionally influent universities leading to a different measure of the efficiency of world countries in academic education [1]. Also interactions between universities and countries are investigated through the construction of a reduced Google matrix from which a friendship network is exhibited direct links and hidden links between academic institutions and countries [2].