It has the highest rank in South Africa and is under the Top 200 universities in the world for the ‘Openness’ indicator.  This indicator takes into account the number of rich files published on dedicated websites indexed by the academic search engine Google Scholar. The University of Pretoria is also under the Top 500 universities worldwide for the ‘Presence’ indicator.

The original aim of the Webometrics Ranking, as published on their website, is to promote academic web presence and to support the Open Access initiatives for significantly increasing the transfer of scientific and cultural knowledge generated by universities to Society. This indicator speaks directly to academic citizenship.

Professor Cheryl de la Rey, the Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of Pretoria, is leading the effort to foster and enhance academic citizenship, whereby the University of Pretoria is committed to harnessing its people’s intellectual abilities in the interest of the nation and Humanity.

The excellent ranking of the University’s ‘Openness’ indicator is evidence of the institution’s commitment to the advancement of academic citizenship.

Seven out of the Top 10 University websites in Africa is South African university websites. The University of Pretoria’s website is third overall in South Africa.

According to their website the "Webometrics Ranking of World Universities" is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain. CSIC, is devoted to the quantitative analysis of the Internet and Web content, especially content that relates to the processes of generation and scholarly communication, of scientific knowledge.