China, with a remarkable rise in high-quality research output in 2018, is gaining on the dominant United States. In the top 10, Australia has jostled Spain out of 10th spot.
View the 2019 Annual Tables Countries/Territories top 50.
1. United States of America
The United States is the most prolific publisher of high-quality science in the world, but China is closing the gap with astonishing rapidity.
Output from the US was down in 2018 compared with 2017, but it continues to be bolstered by its top-performing institutes: Harvard University, Stanford University, MIT and the National Institutes of Health.
The life sciences accounts for almost 50% of the nation’s output in the natural sciences, followed by chemistry, physical sciences, and Earth and environmental sciences, respectively.
In 2018, its biggest collaborative partners were China, the United Kingdom and Germany, while smaller countries, Australia and Switzerland, also made it into its top 10 collaborators list.
In the 2019 Nature Index Biomedical Sciences supplement, the US dominated the Top 200 Institutions table, counting seven of the top 10 institutions, and 15 of the top 20.
2. China
China’s rise in the research rankings is a well-told story, but that doesn’t make it any less remarkable. Its increase in FC in 2018 has been meteoric, and it’s got the whole world’s attention.
While chemistry accounts for around 50% of China’s output in the Nature Index, the physical sciences are also a major strength. Its top five performing institutes are the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University, Nanjing University, Tsinghua University, and the University of Science and Technology of China.
In early 2018, the US National Science Foundation released a report showing that, as far back as 2016, China overtook the US as the top producer of science and engineering articles tracked by Scopus. But in terms of high-quality natural sciences research output tracked by the Nature Index, the US still reigns supreme.
