Abstract: Through analyzing the common characteristics of the index system of the four international universities rankings by subject, which include THE, QS, U.S. News and Shanghai Ranking, the common characteristics of the index system of the world subject rankings are summarized: the index connotation emphasizes the output of research papers and highlights the high influence;the weight distribution emphasizes the subject classification and highlights the subject differentiation;the form of evaluation emphasizes the combination of subjective evaluation and objective evaluation, and international communication and cooperation are emphasized. On this basis, we further investigate the performance of China's high-level industry leader universities in Shanghai Ranking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects and find that the total number of universities listed is increasing year by year with prominent performance in engineering fields but poor performance in social sciences; the ranking position is relatively low; the number and influence of research papers is competitive but the level of excellent scientific researches and internationalization is relatively backward. In the future, to promote the construction of first-class disciplines in high-level industry leader universities, we should make efforts in the aspects of moderate comprehensive development of disciplines, high quality of scientific research output, internationalization of discipline construction, diversification of discipline evaluation and localization of discipline construction.

Key words: industry leader universities, the construction of first-class disciplines, international universities rankings by subject, Shanghai ranking, influence