The world’s top organizations for high-quality physics research are all in China or Europe, with the U.S.’ highest-ranked institution coming in at No 13, according to the latest Nature Index. A China-based observer said this could have far-reaching implications for the United States’ technological edge, with physics underpinning much of modern technology and innovation. But another highlighted America’s overall lead in original research breakthroughs. The Nature Index – maintained by the prestigious journal of the same name – ranks research institutions based on their contributions to articles published in the world’s most influential scientific journals. The latest list was based on research output in the 12 months from November 2023.
China dominated the top 10, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and Tsinghua University taking the top three spots. Only two non-Chinese institutions broke into the top 10 – the Max Planck Society in Germany at No 4 and the French National Center for Scientific Research at No 10. The top three U.S. institutions – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University and Stanford University – were ranked at the 13th, 16th and 20th spots, respectively. In the 2021 index, by contrast, the three American institutions were in the top 10, while only two from China – CAS and USTC – made it into the group. The Nature Index measures two different scores – count and share. An institution receives one point for each article with at least one affiliated author, and these points add up to the institution’s count score. For the share score, each article is assigned a value of one, which is divided equally among all authors. For example, for an article with 10 authors, each receives a share value of 0.1. Each institution’s share score is calculated by adding the share values of the authors from that institution.
In the latest list, CAS leads by a wide margin in both metrics, while the Max Planck Society is the only non-Chinese research organization in the top five. However, a CAS physicist warned that while the index was an informative measure of the strength of research institutions, it did have its limitations and the rankings should be taken with a pinch of salt. “The increasing number of high-quality scientific papers published by Chinese researchers in top journals in recent years reflects to some extent that China’s overall strength in physics research is on the rise,” said Chen Xiaolong, Physicist at the Institute of Physics under CAS. But this metric was not everything, he said. “China still lags behind the United States overall in terms of original and truly groundbreaking research breakthroughs, except for a few branches,” Chen said.
Many factors were behind the rankings. “Chinese and European labs tend to have larger teams, so it is easier to produce more influential papers,” said Analytical Instrumentation Engineer Jin Xianchi. On the other hand, some notably pioneering research may not be accepted by academic journals at first, which could put an innovative organization at a disadvantage. However, according to Jin, there has actually been a decline in America’s overall leadership in scientific research since World War II – including in physics. He said this had happened for a variety of reasons, including a brain drain. In 2018, an article in Forbes magazine warned that the U.S. was at risk of “no longer attracting the best and brightest minds in physics”, the South China Morning Post reports.
