The Nature Index 2017 Tables released on August 10 show that the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) continues to be No 1 in the rankings, a position it has held for five years in a row.

CAS topped the 2017 table of global institutions, followed by Harvard University of the US and the Max Planck Society of Germany. The Chinese academy also secured first position in the rankings of institutional collaborators.

The first release of the Nature Index was in November 2014, when the 68 science journals included in the index were independently selected by two panels of scientists.

According to the Nature Index's official website, the index employs three methods to track author affiliation information. In article count (AC), no matter how many authors an article has, a count of one is assigned to each author's country or institution. Fractional count (FC) takes into account the percentage of authors from a specific institution (or country) and the number of affiliated institutions per article, with all authors deemed to have contributed equally to the article. Weighted fractional count (WFC) is a modified version of FC. In WFC, astronomy and astrophysics articles are given less weight as they would account for too high a proportion if not adjusted.

The top 20 institutes of The Nature Index 2017 as released on August 10 (Image from natureindex.com)

Source: cas.cn