St Andrews and Dundee universities have been named among the top 100 in the world for science.
The accolade has come from the annual Leiden Ranking, which assesses the quality and importance of academic research carried out at 500 institutions.
St Andrews came 71st in the league table, with Dundee close behind in 78th.
Edinburgh University was the only other Scottish university to make the top 100, being placed 66th. Top spot went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.
The ranking found that St Andrews was among the world’s leading universities for international research collaboration. It was the top multi-faculty university in the UK and 25th in the world for research projects carried out with international partners.
It was also commended for the number of times its research was cited or referred to by other scientists.
Last month, academics from St Andrews University’s sea mammal research unit co-led a study involving international colleagues from France, Norway, South Africa, USA, Canada, Sweden and Namibia to make a critically important finding about food stocks required by seabirds.
Astronomers from the university have this week collaborated with researchers using telescopes in Tasmania, Western Australia, South Africa and Chile to make an important breakthrough in the search for new planets.
Professor Louise Richardson, St Andrews principal and vice-chancellor, said: ”St Andrews may be one of the world’s smaller research universities but demonstrably we have global reach as so many of our academics are producing internationally important research.”
A Dundee University spokesman said: ”We are delighted that once again the strength and impact of the research carried out at Dundee is being recognised on the international stage.
”The Leiden Rankings show that the impact of our research ranks among the very best in the world, when considered by the average number of citations per paper.”
Citations in the works of other scientists is a key indicator of how useful research is. Dundee’s mean citation score was the 13th highest in the world.