First place for an Australian university goes to Melbourne, which rose three places to 57th in the ranking, produced out of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

But when adjusted to take size into account, the ANU leap-frogs the University of Melbourne to become the top-ranking Australian university.

ANU Vice-Chancellor Ian Young said the size adjustment was an important qualification as Melbourne was almost three times larger than the ANU.

“Because the rankings measure the total quantity of research output from each institution, it is important that the number of staff in each institution is considered,” Professor Young said.

“We are very pleased with this improvement in our position. It clearly reflects the high quality of research and teaching at ANU, and the commitment to excellence from all ANU staff.''

He noted the ANU also did well in rankings by discipline and subject, coming 37th in the world for Science (including Maths) and in the top 100 in Social Sciences and Life Sciences.

“By subject, ANU took out the top Australian rank at 30 in the world for Physics, a subject identified as of national importance in terms of training graduates to meet future workforce needs,” Professor Young said.

“The ANU community has every reason to be proud of these results, and to see them as an endorsement of the work they do.”

Professor Young said he had made a number of “high-profile strategic appointments in the recent past, and will continue to nurture and add to the already very impressive talent pool at ANU.”

He said he expected the university’s ranking position to further improve in coming years.

All up, Australia now has five universities in the top 100 with the University of Queensland at 90th place (dropping from 86th last year), the University of Sydney at 93rd place (rising from 96th last year) and the University of Western Australia at 96th place (from the 102-150 grouping last year).

Monash University also received an estimated ranking of 137 within the 101-150 band, up from the 151-200 band placing last year.

This represents an improvement of 22 places on last year’s result and means Monash has increased its ranking by an estimated 70 places since 2009 - the greatest improvement of any Group of Eight university.

Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has been presenting the world top 500 universities annually since 2003, based on a set of objective indicators and third-party data.

Indicators include the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of highly cited researchers, the number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, the number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance.

More than 1200 universities are ranked by ARWU every year and the top 500 are published.

Universities Australia commended the results, saying Australia was one of just two countries to increase the number of universities in the top 100, alongside Israel.

"This is an outstanding result for Australia and demonstrates the nation's commitment to having a world class university system providing teaching and research at the highest levels," said chief executive Belinda Robinson.