The Times ranking, along with many other international rankings, are jokes, particularly on the research category.
First of all, universities are in the business of scholarship, not just research, more specifically, not just journal article publication (The Time ranking only counts journal articles). Scholarship include at least grant generation, journal article publication, books (think English department), performance (think music and arts department). The Time ranking only counts journal articles (also note that the value of a journal article varies a lot across different fields), so it biases against those universities with a big component of humanities. As a result, you see MIT, CalTech, etc. rank at the very top. I am not saying these STEM focused universities are not world class universities (they are), but the ranking provides no value for meaningful comparisons among universities that come in different sizes and flavors.
Another funny thing about the Times ranking is that 6% goes to research income. Grant is probably the only meaningful component of research income. In other words, if a universities encourage its English professors to publish novels and poems, it will not be counted; if a university encourages its business professors to publish in elite business journals (almost all business research yields no grant), it will not be counted. The entire Times ranking is basically a quasi-research ranking mostly in the area of STEM, and no more than that.
I used to serve on my university’s scholarship committee. If my university does this kind of research/scholarship comparison among the units within my university, I can tell you, there would be a big revolt, because this is BS for those outside people who do not know the entire scope of university offerings.