New Data: “Nature Index Annual Tables 2022: China’s Research Spending Pays Off”

From a Nature Article:

Chinese research outputs enjoyed something of a boom last year. The performance of Jiangsu University is a good example. Its campus sits on the banks of the Yangtze River in the city of Zhenjiang, which is about a three-hour drive inland from Shanghai. The university saw its ‘adjusted Share’ score in the Nature Index, which tracks author affiliations in research articles across 82 high-quality science journals, skyrocket by 118% between 2020 and 2021.

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Jiangsu University is not an anomaly among Chinese institutions. According to an analysis of the Nature Index Annual Tables 2022, released today, the 31 fastest-rising institutions, as judged by their change in adjusted Share, were all in China. (See also ‘Leading institutions in the Nature Index 2022 Annual Tables’.) Out of the top 50 fastest-rising institutions, just 10 were from other countries or regions. This marks a significant change compared with the 2021 rankings, in which China could lay claim to only two out of the top ten fastest-rising institutions. These were the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

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Whereas many Western researchers have denounced the pressure to keep churning out papers, saying it creates a toxic workplace culture, the heavy emphasis on publishing papers for career progression could partly explain China’s dominance in the list of fastest-rising institutions, says Lim. There are also ways in which the higher-education system in China can act as a valve to release excess pressure, however, and this could help to fuel research output by alleviating some of the risk that comes with an intense publish-or-perish mentality. “When you reach 60 years of age in China, you’re on the retirement track and you move into mentoring for the young people. That’s really important,” says Coates. “In the West, you get people in their eighties going up against young researchers for grants.”

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Nature Index Annual Tables 2022

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The 2022 tables are based on Nature Index data from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021.

• Leading institutions
• Leading countries/territories
• Leading academic institutions
• Leading corporate institutions
• Leading government institutions
• Leading healthcare institutions
• Leading NPO/NGO institutions
• Leading institutions in chemistry
• Leading institutions in Earth & environmental sciences
• Leading institutions in life sciences
• Leading institutions in physical sciences
• Leading institutions on other fields of research

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