How fortunate for Karen Andrews as minister for industry, science and technology that “innovation” (so Malcolm Turnbull) is not in her title. It will save her from questions about the absence of Australian institutions from the 2018 Reuters innovative universities ranking.

The US accounts for 46 of the top 100 (there are two from Canada) this year –pretty much the same as last.

The top ten, starting with Stanford U are all in the US, excepting KU Leven from Belgium (7) and Imperial College London (8).

There are 27 innovating unis in Europe (in which Reuters charitably includes the UK) and 23 from Asia. Germany and Japan are the equal second rating countries with nine each – China has five, equalling the UK and France.

It’s the growth rate which makes China the country to watch, having one university on the list in 2015, two in 2016, and three last year.

The Reuters ranking is based on data from Clarivate Analytics (Thomson Reuters as was) including the Derwent patent index and Web of Science journal citation stats.