CAS’s global competitive edges

Comparing CAS’s output with that of its global peers, its traditional strength of chemistry is very evident. The comparisons also highlight many advantages enjoyed by large umbrella research organizations, which tend to lead in overall research output.

CAS’s overall output in the scientific literature has dwarfed that of the other leading international research institutions for the past decade. This gap is widening as CAS has a CAGR of 11%, the highest of its peer group. The second largest output is from Germany’s Helmholtz Association with slightly under 119,000 papers, only around one third the output of CAS, and a much more modest CAGR of 8% (Figure 7). It is followed by Harvard University in the United States.

CAS has the highest output in all of the broad research fields with one exception: medical and health sciences. Here, CAS is seventh in terms of its 2008-2018 aggregate output, with Harvard in the lead. CAS is catching up, however, as it has the highest CAGR, at 13%. By 2018, it had already overtaken MIT, the University of Cambridge, and the Helmholtz Association, and currently ranks fourth in absolute annual output in medicine.

Medical and health sciences only accounts for 7% of CAS’s overall research output, a big gap compared with 57% for Harvard University (Figure 8). As clinical research is not a traditional strength of CAS, there is still a catch-up role to play. But, as discussed earlier, the strengthening of biological sciences research and the national strategic push to promote population health have driven CAS’s high growth in medical and health science research. CAS’s heavy concentration on chemical sciences and engineering is also expected to become more balanced with this growing national push for population health.

Comparison at the sub speciality

Drilling deeper into CAS’s strengths, slightly different trends emerge. CAS leads the world in research output in the physical sciences overall. While that lead has not wavered in the past decade in the sub specialty of atomic and molecular physics, CAS is second in 10-year research output to the Max Plank Society in the astronomical and space sciences. That gap has recently closed though. Thanks to CAS’s higher growth rate, its 2017 and 2018 research output was larger. Both institutions lead the Helmholtz Association, the third by volume, by a large margin.

In most of the medical and health sciences sub specialities, although CAS is not in the lead, it has narrowed the gap, particularly in neuroscience. From 2008 to 2015, CAS was in either sixth or seventh in this group. Since 2016, however, CAS has been publishing more, with the highest five-year CAGR. In 2018, its output exceeded that of close rivals, such as Max Planck, to be the fourth most prolific. Against the backdrop of the approval of the China Brain Project, CAS established a centre of excellence on brain sciences in 2014, which could well have contributed to this growth in neuroscience.

Comparison at the highest level

For high-quality science published in the Nature Index journals, the gap between CAS and its rivals is often much smaller, but not in chemistry and engineering (Figure 9). In chemistry, CAS not only dwarfs the output of the rest of the group, but is also growing the fastest, cementing its leading position. Max Planck publishes the second most overall, but in 2018 that was just over 600 papers compared to more than 2,300 at CAS. Engineering shows a similar pattern, with MIT in second place, having published just over 25% the number of papers as CAS in the past 10 years.

CAS loses its leading position in both mathematical and physical sciences though, where it is behind Max Planck for 10-year output. The latter is also growing more quickly than CAS.

In biological sciences, CAS’s performance in high-quality publications is better than its general research output. Ten-year combined data show CAS in fourth, but it has the highest CAGR, and year-on-year has surpassed the other institutes, showing potential to achieve a leading position in annual output. From ranking ninth in 2008, it had overtaken Max Planck by 2018 with slightly more than 600 papers, behind only Harvard on 740.

Physical chemistry: Driving tomorrow’s green tech

Chemistry is undoubtedly CAS’s strongest field. According to the Nature Index, chemistry papers typically make up nearly half of CAS’s research output in any given year, and CAS has produced the most chemistry papers of any institution worldwide for four consecutive years.

Within chemistry, CAS’s strongest sub speciality is physical chemistry — the study of chemical systems using the theory and methods of physics. As such, it is widely applicable in both the chemical and physical sciences, as well as in industry.

“CAS is particularly strong in using physical chemistry techniques in topical and important areas such as sustainable energy development,” explains Richard Catlow, a chemist at University College London, and foreign secretary of the Royal Society. He adds that CAS has “invested well both in people and in equipment and infrastructure” and consequently has “a number of world-leading physical chemistry labs”.

One example is the Institute of Chemistry at CAS (ICCAS), which published 536 articles between 1 June 2018 and 31 May 2019. According to the Nature Index, that is the highest publishing count of CAS’s chemistry institutes. ICCAS houses three state key laboratories and eight CAS key laboratories, and specializes in organic/polymer materials, molecular science and nanoscience, energy, and green chemistry, many of which use physical chemistry techniques.

The CAS president, Chunli Bai, is himself a physical chemist who has published over 350 papers. Bai’s research highlights include developing China’s first scanning tunnelling microscope and atomic force microscope (AFM), important tools enabling the advances of Chinese nanotechnology. The AFM helped secure the first-ever image of the hydrogen bond. As revealed in a 2013 Science paper, scientists at the NCNST used non-contact AFM to observe hydrogen bonds between clusters of the flat organic molecule 8-hydroxyquinoline on a copper surface. “The present technique may provide an important and complementary characterization method for unravelling the fundamental aspects of molecular interactions at the single-molecule level,” the authors said in their paper¹. The work has been cited in the scientific literature more than 200 times.

CAS’s physical chemistry research aligns strongly with industrial needs for alternative energy and green production. Scientists at USTC in Hefei published in Nature about a process to transform cobalt into a particularly active and robust electrocatalyst for turning waste carbon dioxide into a useful liquid fuel². “Electroreduction of CO₂ into useful fuels represents a potentially ‘clean’ strategy for replacing fossil feedstocks and dealing with increasing CO₂ emissions,” wrote the authors in this 2016 paper. The paper received global attention, and has been cited more than 600 times.

In promoting green chemistry, CAS scientists at the Institute of Metal Research (IMR) in Shenyang developed environmentally friendly refrigeration technology. In a recent Nature paper, they gave details of how the plastic crystal neopentylglycol behaves at the microscale when cooled³. The end goal of this field is to develop climate-friendly alternatives to hydrofluorocarbons for use in cooling systems. The work “paves the way to next-generation solid-state refrigeration technologies,” wrote the authors.

Emerging patterns for sub specialties in a global comparison

Delving deeper into the sub specialities, CAS’s superiority in physical chemistry is overwhelming. However, in astronomical and space science, CAS has a way to go to top Max Planck for high-quality publications. The German group’s output is also growing at a faster rate. It is clear that there is an intense global competition in this subject area and no institution can rest on its past achievements.

In medical and health sciences, CAS is quickly catching up in neuroscience, with the highest growth rate among the studied institutions. While for eight years from 2008, CAS was consistently eighth or ninth for neuroscience output in the Nature Index journals, starting in 2016, however, its high-quality output has grown more strongly, rising to fourth in 2018, behind only Harvard, Max Planck and Stanford. Its 10-year CAGR is 13%, but 16% for the past five years, an accelerating growth rate.

Again, this probably reflects the influence of the China Brain Project and the centre of excellence established to explore this field. Coinciding with this growth is a CAS ‘Priority’ programme launched in 2012, trying to map the brain connectome for a better understanding of the brain functions and intelligence. When the China Brain Project was approved in 2016, improving diagnosis and prevention of brain diseases was added to the agenda. The ‘Priority’ programme on brain science, led by the Institute of Neuroscience of SIBS and the Institute of Automation, was renewed after the end of its first phase in 2017, suggesting prospects for continued growth. As with other areas of medical research, CAS’s willingness to mobilize cross-disciplinary resources, linking life sciences, medical sciences and information sciences, gives it a competitive edge in this increasingly interdisciplinary field.