Singapore’s scientific output continues to grow

Media releases, Nature Publishing Index 2013 Asia-Pacific

PRESS RELEASE FROM NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

Thursday 27 March 2014

Singapore holds its own among its bigger Asia-Pacific neighbours, ranking fifth for scientific research output according to the Nature Publishing Index 2013 Asia-Pacific released today.

The country’s multi-billion dollar research and development investment programme has been steadily growing over the past decade and its NPI output almost doubled in 2013.

Singapore’s three significant research institutions all rank in the Asia-Pacific top 20. The National University of Singapore (NUS), sixth in the Asia-Pacific, outperformed the top institutions from higher-ranked nations, Australia and South Korea.

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) recorded a 250% increase in corrected count to take second place in Singapore and 12th in the region. Third is the national research body, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (at 19 in the region).

NUS and NTU both rocketed up the global rankings in 2013, to 46 (from 74 in 2012) and 73 (from 217), respectively.

The Nature Publishing Index 2013 Asia-Pacific has been released as a supplement to Nature today. It measures the output of research articles from nations and institutes published in the 18 Nature-branded primary research journals over the calendar year to provide a snapshot of research in the Asia-Pacific in 2013. To see the latest results for the region, and the Nature Publishing Index Global Top 100, visit the Index website at www.natureasia.com/en/publishing-index/. The data posted on the website is updated every week with a moving window of 12 months of data.

-ENDS- 

Contact: Niall Byrne
Science in Public, Australia
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Notes on the Nature Publishing Index:

The Nature Publishing Index (NPI) results should be used with some caveats. It is based only on the publication output in Nature and the 17 Nature research journals. So while it offers a broad coverage of basic research in the life sciences, physical and chemical sciences, the attention to applied sciences, engineering and clinical medicine is relatively limited. The NPI should be used primarily as an indicator of strength in high quality basic research. It does not weight multiple factors in the way that other rankings do, such as the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities or the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

The output of an institution or country obviously depends on its size. Some institutions have very large numbers of researchers that help drive up their rankings. So it is important to take into account the numbers of researchers in an institution or country when interpreting the results.

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