Thomson Reuters, which supplies all data for THE¡¯s rankings, launched its fourth annual Academic Reputation Survey in March, and has now confirmed that the worldwide survey will close on 17 May.

Many thousands of academics from all over the world have been invited to provide their expert, subject-level view of the best universities in their field. Final reminders are being distributed this week.

All those invited to take part in the survey, which is available in ten languages, are statistically representative of their region and their academic discipline. The survey accepts no volunteers or nominations from institutions, to guard against sample bias.

¡°Those invited to take part are representing both their country and their discipline,¡± said Phil Baty, Times ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Rankings editor. ¡°So we urge them to join tens of thousands of their peers and lend their expertise and give up a little of their time to help us develop this insightful and valuable picture of the most reputable universities in the world.¡±

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In 2012 there were more than 16,600 respondents, and in the three annual rounds of the survey, around 48,000 responses have been collected from more than 150 countries.

The survey forms two key indicators of the 13 used to create the annual Times ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø World University Rankings, which will next be published in October 2013. The survey results are also used in isolation to produce the annual Times ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø World Reputation Rankings, published each March.

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The survey simply asks respondents which institutions they consider the best in terms of both research and teaching. They are not asked to rank institutions, but simply to name no more than 15 which they consider to be the ¡°best¡±.

Participants - who should look out for an email from thomson@ts-productinfo.com - have the opportunity to answer questions in six subject areas: engineering and technology; physical sciences; life sciences; clinical, preclinical and health; social sciences; and arts and humanities.

To help control for language and translation bias, the survey is offered in Arabic, Brazilian, Portuguese, European Portuguese, English, French, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Spanish.

As well as fuelling Times ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø rankings, the survey forms part of Thomson Reuters¡¯ Global Institutional Profiles Project, an initiative to create data-driven profiles of globally significant research institutions.

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More on how the survey informs the THE World Reputation Rankings