India is making rapid progress for research output in the Nature Index and last year had a higher percentage growth in contributions to index journals than China, according to the latest release of calendar-year data.
The Nature Index 2024 Research Leaders – previously known as Annual Tables – is a series of rankings that highlight the leading countries, territories and research institutions for output in the database. The rankings show that India has overtaken Australia and Switzerland to sit in 9th place overall. In the natural sciences, the country is now 8th.
Since the Nature Index was introduced in 2014, China has been the standout country for growth in Share, a metric that measures contribution to papers in the Index by authors based in a particular location. In 2022, China overtook the United States as the leading country for natural-sciences output. In 2023, a year after health-sciences journals were added to the Index, China was top overall.
India’s overall Share for 2023 was 1,494.27 — which is much lower than China’s, at 23,171.84 — but its growth is now mirroring its Asian peer. From 2022 to 2023, India recorded an increase of 14.5% in its adjusted Share, a metric that takes account of annual fluctuations in the number of Nature Index articles each year. China, by comparison, had a growth in adjusted Share of 13.6%. Many leading Western countries continued to record dips in adjusted Share: the United Kingdom fell by 8.2%, the United States by 7.1% and Germany by 6.8%.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
