The ranking is empirical and compiles a methodology that employs 10 different metrics. The criteria focused on academic papers, which indicate basic research performed at a university, and patent filings, which point to an institution's interest in protecting and commercializing its discoveries. Compiled by the Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, the list uses proprietary data and analysis tools. The process cross references the 500 academic and government organizations with the greatest number of published articles in scholarly journals as indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science Core Collection database against how many patents and patent equivalents each organization filed in the same period in the Derwent World Patents Index and the Derwent Innovations Index. The remaining 70 institutions were mostly universities and were ranked using criteria such as frequency of patent applications granted, number of filed patents, frequency of those patents being cited, as well as how many of their papers were cited by patents or co-authored by an industry author. The ranking has the Asia-Pacific edition featuring top 75 institutions across the region and top 25 most innovative governmental institutions in the world.