In the overall ranking of the 2018 edition of the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities (the NTU Ranking), the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) is ranked among the 500 best universities in the world, in 445th place. The UPC is also in 186th place in Europe and is the top technical university in Spain. This ranking evaluates the productivity, impact and excellence of the scientific publications of more than 800 institutions based on bibliometric indicators obtained from a series of Clarivate Analytics databases, excluding publications focusing on Arts and Humanities.

In addition to the overall ranking, the Taiwan Ranking also publishes classifications by fields and subjects of up to 500 institutions around the world. By fields, the UPC stands out in Engineering, for which it is placed 122nd in the world, 20th in Europe and 1st in Spain, a leadership that it has maintained since 2011. In the field of Natural Sciences, the UPC is among the top 350 universities in the world (301-350 range) and the top 155 in Europe (127-155 range), and it shares first place in Spain with the Universitat Politècnica de València.

Among the Top 100 in the world in four subjects
By subjects, the UPC is placed in ten classifications, as in the previous edition of the ranking. It has maintained its position among the top 100 institutions in the world in Electrical Engineering (65th place), Mathematics (67th place), Civil Engineering (77th place), and Computer Science (87th place); and it is 110th in the world in Mechanical Engineering, 176th in Chemical Engineering, 209th in Geosciences, and 256th in Materials Science. It is also ranked among the top 350 universities in the world in Physics (301-350 range) and among the top 450 in Chemistry (401-450 range).

The UPC is also the Spanish leader in Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Civil Engineering, and is ranked second in Spain in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering.

Top scores in the h-index and high impact journals
The methodology of the NTU Ranking combines bibliometric indicators that consider both the long-term and the most recent results for three areas: research productivity, taking into account the number of articles published in the last eleven years (2007 to 2017) and the number of articles published in the last year (2017); research impact, taking into account the number of citations received in the last eleven years and the last two years, and the average number of citations received in the last eleven years; and research excellence, taking into account the h-index of the last two years (2016-2017), the number of Highly Cited Papers in the last eleven years and the number of articles published in high-impact journals in the last two years.

In the overall ranking, the UPC obtained the best scores in the indicator that measures the h-index for the last two years and the number of articles published in high-impact journals during the same period.