China on top in research articles

Its contributions to articles published in the Nature Index group of high-quality natural-science journals have been increasing since 2014.

China’s share in the Nature Index metric, the fraction of author affiliations in 82 high-quality research journals, has steadily risen since 2015, and it has now overtaken the US. | Photo Credit: Nature Index

FOR the first time, China has become the number one ranked country for contributions to research articles published in the Nature Index group of high-quality natural-science journals, overtaking the US. Nature Index was introduced in 2014. Since then, China’s share has been increasing rapidly. It was the leading country in the physical sciences and chemistry in 2021. A country’s share is based on the percentage of authors from that nation on each paper published in Nature Index journals.

Author affiliations from the 82 journals that Nature Index tracked showed that in 2022 China’s share was 19,373 compared with the US’ 17,610. The latest data, a snapshot taken in April 2023, suggest that China overtook the US in earth and environmental sciences for the first time and is still trailing in one natural-sciences category: life sciences