“China still ranks first in the Nature Index after it was expanded last year to include more than 60 medical journals,” the state-run Guangming Daily reported on June 10.
The number of Chinese research institutions listed in the Nature Index has risen sharply in recent years, surpassing the number of papers published by researchers at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
In 2023, Chinese institutions surpassed U.S. institutions for the first time, a lead that has been maintained this year and even expanded by some institutions.
Its rapid expansion has raised suspicions of favoritism toward Chinese institutions from some who see China’s growth as part of a united front battle plan.
China’s rise in the rankings sparked skeptical discussion on the online question and answer platform Quora, with some commenters suggesting the rankings were influenced by funding from Chinese universities.
The Nature Index team acknowledged that they received a series of questions from The Washington Post but had not responded by press time.
However, one Chinese researcher defended the ranking methodology.
“The addition of new journals is just a scientific update of the Nature Index’s statistical methods and is not considered unfair to any particular country,” said Liu Xiaomin, a researcher at the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
She also noted that new journals added to the index are selected by an independent group of researchers, whose criteria are published on the index’s website.
“this [paying money to buy rankings] “This is also not possible because the calculation method and the journal data used for the calculation are public. If you have any doubts about the calculation results, you can just calculate them yourself,” Liu said.
“Different people may have different interpretations. This list should be taken properly and not over-interpreted,” she added.
American institutions are not the only ones to have benefited from the inclusion of medical journals in the index.
According to the analysis, research output at China’s top universities grew by about 10 percent on average from 2022 to 2023. Specifically, Central South University, known for its medical expertise, saw a 25 percent increase in research, while Chongqing Medical University’s research grew by 80 percent, mainly due to a slight increase from the previous year.
China’s advantage is mainly due to its strength in chemistry and physical sciences, which will account for 85% of China’s total share in the Nature Index in 2023. But China is also catching up in the biological sciences.
China’s share of published research in biological sciences is expected to grow by 15.8 percent from 2022 to 2023, the highest among the four fields tracked by the index.
This growth is supported by increased research spending, which increased from 2.4% of GDP in 2021 to 2.64% in 2023.
“The country’s growing number of large scientific facilities demonstrates its ambition and suggests a desire for global impact and recognition,” Nature reports.
Scientific research facilities such as the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, the China Jinping Underground Laboratory and the Large High-Altitude Air Shower Observatory not only promote fundamental research in physics, but also attract international scientists.
“Many researchers are keen to visit these unique big science infrastructures because they are a source of new data that cannot be obtained anywhere else,” Anna-Lisa Ahlers, head of a research group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, wrote in a June 5 Nature article.
“These returnees are the most productive 15 percent of researchers of their generation, publishing on average 2.5 times more papers than their counterparts who stayed in the U.S.,” The Economist reported June 12.
Science policy researchers suggest this may be a shift underway: “The hegemony of the United States as the ‘go-to place’ for researchers around the world is under threat,” Jenny Lee, a science policy researcher at the University of Arizona, wrote in a report in Nature.
Some restrictive policies may inhibit scholars’ free choice. “If you’re funded by NASA, you can’t collaborate with Chinese people,” she added.
