On October 15, ShanghaiRanking, a higher education evaluation institution, released the 2026 ShanghaiRanking’s Best Chinese Subjects Rankings. Six disciplines of SDFMU were listed: Clinical Medicine, Pharmacy, Biology, Basic Medicine, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, and Nursing.
This year’s rankings reflect strong advances in core disciplines and steady improvement of featured disciplines. Clinical Medicine ranks 23rd nationwide, rising 3 places from 2025 and entering the top 20% across China. Pharmacy is placed 32nd nationally, an increase of 4 positions compared with 2025, landing in the top 21%. Featured disciplines including Biology, Nursing and Biomedical Engineering have seen steady ranking gains, with their core disciplinary competitiveness continuously strengthened.
The 2026 ShanghaiRanking’s Best Chinese Subjects Rankings adopt the classification of first-level disciplines specified in the Catalogue of Disciplines and Majors for Postgraduate Education (2022) issued by the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council and the Ministry of Education. The rankings cover all universities with postgraduate degree authorization in the relevant disciplines, and only universities ranking within the top 50% of each discipline are published. Its indicator system falls into five categories: talent cultivation, platforms and research projects, research outputs and awards, academic papers, and high-end talents, consisting of 20 indicators and over 200 observational variables measuring disciplinary competitiveness.
Since the establishment, SDFMU has closely responded to major national and regional strategic needs. It has steadily implemented high-level discipline development programs and programs for priority and featured disciplines, continuously optimized the allocation of disciplinary resources, and coordinated the cultivation of leading disciplines, upgrading of featured disciplines, and interdisciplinary integration. The discipline development framework has been steadily refined, yielding tangible outcomes. At present, 11 of the disciplines have entered the ESI top 1% globally, among which the two core disciplines - Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy - rank in the ESI top 1‰ worldwide. Meanwhile, four disciplines have been approved for the Shandong Provincial Program for Key and Distinctive Disciplines. Among them, Clinical Medicine is included in the First-Class Discipline Program. This has helped build a disciplinary development framework where top-tier disciplines lead, strong disciplines grow, multiple fields provide support, and interdisciplinary collaboration drives progress.Moving forward, SDFMU will continue to follow a strategy-driven, goal-oriented and problem-focused approach. It will elevate its strong disciplines to new heights, advance the high-quality development of its medicine-focused disciplinary clusters, and keep contributing the strengths of SDFMU to the Healthy China and Healthy Shandong initiatives.
