On November 13th, the Nature Publishing Group released a first ever Nature Index of the top 200 scientific research institutions and universities from all over the world. WHU ranks 105th in the world and occupies the 8th place in China with an achievement totaling 154 papers and a contribution index of 98.8. The contribution index increased by 33% compared with 74.27 in 2012. This is a remarkable progress.
Nature Index is a database jointly published by the Nature Publishing Group and its subsidiary corporation Digital Science. It mainly supervises and traces papers published in the 68 high-quality periodicals in last year to evaluate the scientific contribution made by the authors and the related institutions. These periodicals are considered by researchers to be the best for paper publication, and are selected by two independent selection panels of on-the-job scientists.
The major difference between the Nature Index and the Nature Publishing Index published before the year 2013 lies in that the supervised and traced periodicals are not limited to the publications of the Nature Publishing Group. There are three indexes for measuring performance, including article count, fractional count and weighted fractional count.
The data suggests that the scientific research output and quality of Chinese universities and researchers are improving steadily, ranking second after the US in this aspect for the year 2014.
Nick Campbell, the executive chief editor of Nature and the director of Nature Publishing Group in the Chinese Region, said, “Nature Index reflects the constant growth of China’s scientific research in a unique perspective, especially the growth of the high-quality scientific research output. It provides a new approach to evaluate scientific research papers and relevant institutions. We hope to provide a new approach with better pertinence and adaptation by focusing on the fraction of periodicals selected by our researchers. Users can get a clear view of the scientific research mode, observe the latest trends, analyze the strength of individual researchers and research groups and comprehend how the institutions and countries cooperate.”
Nature Publishing Group is a company publishing scientific periodicals, the head quarter of which is situated in London, the United Kingdom. Many periodicals of significant impact in academic fields such as Nature Neuroscience, Nature Methods, Nature Reviews and so on, are subordinate to the company. The most famous among those is Nature .
（Rewritten by Aoqi Li, edited by Diana & Sijia Hu)
