Looked at the proportion of their scientific publications that rank among the top 1% and 5% in their fields by citations based on the same ranking, Hunan University ranks 39th in the world (5th in Asia) and 27th globally (4th in Asia) respectively.[10] In 2020, the Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities ranked Hunan University at 161st globally and 33rd in Asia.[30] It ranks 3rd globally in "Civil Engineering", 10th in "Chemical Engineering", 14th in "Mechanical Engineering", 23rd in "Chemistry", 42nd in "Computer Science", 51st in "Electrical Engineering", 52nd in "Material Science", 87th in "Mathematics", 114th in "Physics" and 151st in "Economics and Business" according to the same ranking.[31] In 2020, a research paper by Loet Leydesdorff, a famous scientometrician, employs data of 205 China's leading research intensive universities, including in the Leiden Ranking 2020 to classify them into three main groups: Top, Middle, and Bottom.