New data from the Nature Index show a surge in China's publishing of high-quality research in the Earth and environmental sciences. The United States remains the leading nation in the field, but China's output is catching up, rising by 95% between 2012 and 2017 to take over second place from the United Kingdom in the index. The Chinese Academy of Sciences is the world's leading producer of Earth and environmental sciences research in the top-tier science journals tracked by the Nature Index.
These findings are featured in the now published Nature Index 2018 Earth and Environmental Sciences supplement, Interactive map - Top 500 cities in the Earth and Environmental Sciences, which identifies the countries and institutions spearheading high-quality research efforts to understand our changing world and develop solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing humanity.
Although international collaboration on high-quality research is growing across all natural science disciplines - a trend previously identified by the Nature Index - this is particularly evident in the Earth and environmental sciences. Since 2012, this field has had the highest proportion of internationally collaborative articles in journals included in the index, and the lowest proportion of articles produced by a single institution. The supplement also highlights the highly interdisciplinary nature of Earth and environmental sciences research, with scientists working together across different fields to solve some of the complex environmental challenges facing the planet.
The leading institutions in high-quality Earth and environmental sciences research are: The Chinese Academy of Sciences (1), Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (2), National Aeronautics and Space Administration, US (3), French National Centre for Scientific Research (4), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (5), California Institute of Technology, US (6), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US (7), U.S. Geological Survey (8), University of Colorado Boulder, US (9) and Stanford University, US (10).
The top performing countries are: United States (1), China (2), United Kingdom (3), Germany (4), France (5), Canada (6), Australia (7), Japan (8), Switzerland (9) and the Netherlands (10). In the Nature Index tables covering all of the natural sciences, South Korea and Spain are in the top ten, but for Earth and environmental sciences only, they are displaced by Australia and the Netherlands, whose strength in this field brings them up from 11th and 14th place respectively in the overall tables.
The Nature Index 2018 Earth and Environmental Sciences supplement coincides with the addition of five journals on the subject to the index, doubling the number of articles on this topic. These additions are part of a wider update to the Nature Index database. From June 2018 author affiliation data are tracked from a revised list of journals 82 high-quality science journals, updated from 68, to provide more even coverage of disciplines.
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