Harvard University in the US has retained its spot as the best university in the world, according to rankings table published this week.

Harvard is one of eight US universities to make the top ten which also includes the UK's Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

And with American establishments receiving far more funding than others around the world, their dominance has continued.

Cambridge is now ranked second in the Shanghai Jiao Tong list while Stanford slipped from second to third and is joined by University of California, Berkeley, and Massachusetts Institute in the top five.

The Shanghai Jiao Tong list ranks universities by several indicators of academic or research performance, including alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers, articles published in Nature and Science, articles indexed in major citation indices, and the per capita academic performance of an institution. The list also takes arts and humanities into account more than previously.