U.S. News and World Report will release its first global ranking of universities by the end of October.

The overall rankings will encompass 500 universities spread out across 49 countries, including the United States. The magazine, which has been providing rankings for American colleges since 1983, believes that accurate evaluative information of universities worldwide is needed as an increasing number of students plan to enroll in universities outside of their own country.

"The 2015 Best Global Universities rankings will show which universities are the best globally, as well as those that are highly ranked in certain countries and regions and are leaders in key academic subject areas," Robert Morse, U.S. New's chief data strategist, said.

The new rankings will focus on reputational data, bibliometric indicators of academic research performance, and data on faculty and Ph.D. graduates, allowing prospective students to accurately "compare" institutions around the world.

In addition, U.S. News will publish the top 100 global universities in 21 subject areas, including key fields such as chemistry, clinical medicine, computer science, economics and business, engineering, environment/ecology, mathematics and physics. These rankings will be based on academic research performance in those subjects.

The rankings will be powered by Thomson Reuters InCitiesTM research analytics solutions.

Thomson Reuters also provides data for the global university ranking compiled by Times Higher Education.

"What we're doing is completely, 100 percent independent from [Times Higher Education]," Morse reassured. "It's our methodology, our choice of variables, our choice of weights, our choice of how the calculations are done, our choice of how the data's going to be presented."

Morse said the U.S. News will be the first American publisher to enter the global rankings space.