The university's Abya Yala Publishing House now ranks 87th in the Scholarly Publishers Index (SPI), it previously ranked 135th. The index is managed by Universidad Complutense de Madrid and is based on a qualitative methodology that assesses academic prestige through surveys to Spanish speaking academic experts.

The ranking includes publishing houses from all over the world. Abya Yala was evaluated along with publishing houses from UNESCO, Sigo XXI (Argentina), Felix Meine, Franco Angel, Porrúa and UNAM. 

Scholarly Publishers Indicators Expanded is a project that shows the degree of dissemination of each publishing house in five information systems:  Book Citation Index (Thomson Reuters) – Scopus Book Titles (Elsevier) – Norwegian list – Scholarly Publishers Indicators / Prestigio editorial (Grupo ÍLIA/CSIC) – Finnish list.

After analyzing the content in those systems, they check the presence of each publishing house in the systems. An interactive graph is then created to show the number of systems where a publishing house can be found.   

The rankng: http://ilia.cchs.csic.es/SPI/prestigio_expertos_2018.php