The position in the rankings is determined by the academic reputation of the university, its employer reputation, number of papers per faculty in the last 5 years calculated using the data from Elsevier’s Scopus as well as the Web Impact Factor based on the Webometrics ranking. Among the Russian universities that have made it into the QS rankings, SPbU ranks second for academic reputation and the Web Impact Factor.
In the past two years (the ranking was published for the first time in 2014), SPbU has risen from the seventh to the third place. The increase of SPbU position in the ranking is due primarily to the measures undertaken by the University in order to create a comfortable research environment. The high web impact is a direct consequence of the maximum transparency policy, which is currently pursued at SPbU.
«The fact that St. Petersburg State University has taken such a high position in the QS University Rankings is a significant achievement for us," said Nikolay Kropachev, Rector of SPbU. «Free access to a most extensive collection of digital information resources and the Research Park, the best in Russia and worth more than 6 billion roubles, as well as the possibility of getting
Source: http://english.spbu.ru/news/809-spbu-makes-the-top-three-in-the-qs-rankings