Recently, Leiden University announced the 2011 Leiden Ranking which focused on indicators such as number of times an article is cited, ratio of the top 10% publications (PP_{top 10%}), and mean normalized citations score (MNCS). In this ranking, NTHU is placed on the top of nine Taiwanese institutions, and at the 18^th of all 104 Asian institutions being ranked.

Leiden University's Center for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) has over 25 years of experience in designing an advanced bibliometrics indicator and is using such biblometrics to rank 500 large research institutions worldwide and to assess the quality of their scientific papers. Thomson Reuter's Web of Science is the data source of Leiden Ranking. The website uses high precision tools to measure the effect of scientific research cooperation between institutions, and uses the quality of published papers as indicators. Unlike other ranking, it does not take income, institution reputation, staff-to-student ratio, and other organizational elements into account.

President Lih J. Chen stated that he is pleased but not surprised. According to him, due to the impliementation of the new "Per Paper Reward System" designed to encourage faculty to publish scientific articles and promote growth in both quality and quantity; the number of articles by our faculty members published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Science and Cell has grown rapidly and are being recognized globally.

2011 Leiden Ranking ranked a total of nine Taiwanese institutions based on their PP_{top 10%}. The results are: NTHU (259^th among the top 500 worldwide), National Chiao Tung University (322^th), National Chung Hsing University (328^th), National Taiwan University (353^th), National Cheng Kung University (369^th), National Sun Yat-Sen University (375^th), National Central University (407^th), National Yang-Ming University (465^th) and Chang Gung University (471^th).