Japan remains the major scientific power in Asia-Pacific

Media releases, Nature Publishing Index 2013 Asia-Pacific

PRESS RELEASE FROM NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

Thursday 27 March 2014

Japan remains the major scientific power in Asia-Pacific, despite China nipping at its heels – according to the Nature Publishing Index (NPI) 2013 Asia-Pacific published today as a supplement to Nature.

Japan, which is overcoming the impacts of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, with the help of a US$1.8 billion science stimulus package, continues to lead the Asia-Pacific NPI in physics, life sciences and earth and environmental sciences.

Despite the University of Tokyo being knocked off the top of the Asia-Pacific NPI institution rankings for the first time by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the institution is still the top contributor to Nature.

Growth in China’s output is outpacing Japanese science, and the former may overtake Japan in Nature publications within one or two years.

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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