The Nature Index is a database that tracks institutions and countries and their scientific output since its introduction in November, 2014. Each year, Nature Index ranks the leading institutions (which can be companies, universities, government agencies, research institutes, or NGOs) and countries by the number of
scientific articles
: ''For a broader class of literature, see Academic publishing.''
Scientific literature comprises scholarly publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences. Within an academic field, scient ...
and
papers published in leading journals. This ranking can also be categorized by individual fields of research such as
life sciences
This list of life sciences comprises the branches of science that involve the scientific study of life – such as microorganisms, plants, and animals including human beings. This science is one of the two major branches of natural science, the ...
,
chemistry
Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...
,
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
, or
earth sciences
Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. This is a branch of science dealing with the physical, chemical, and biological complex constitutions and synergistic linkages of Earth's four sphere ...
, with different institutions leading in each. The Nature Index was conceived by
Nature Research
Nature Portfolio (formerly known as Nature Publishing Group and Nature Research) is a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in scie ...
. In total, more than 10,000 institutions are listed in the Nature Index.
The Nature Index migrated from its own domain www.natureindex.com to the Nature Portfolio platform
www.nature.com in July, 2022
Methodology
The Nature Index attempts to objectively measure the scientific output of institutions and countries, taking into account differences in quality. Therefore, only articles published in 82 selected high-quality journals are counted. These journals are selected by an independent committee. If authors from several institutions and/or countries are involved in a scientific article, it is divided accordingly, assuming that all researchers were equally involved in the article. For example, this “fractional count” (FC) received by each author would be 0.1 for an article with 10 authors. If an author is affiliated with more than one institution, that author’s FC is then subdivided equally across their affiliated institutions. The process is similar for countries and regions, though the fact that some institutions have overseas labs makes the process more complicated, with such labs being counted towards their appropriate host countries.
Top institutions
The top 25 institutions with the highest share of articles published in scientific journals according to the Nature Index 2022, which is valid for the calendar year 2021:
Top countries
The top 25 countries with the highest share of articles published in scientific journals according to the Nature Index 2022, which is valid for the calendar year 2021.
Notes
References
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International rankings
2016 introductions