2020 tables: Institutions - Earth & environmental sciences - academic

The 2020 tables are based on Nature Index data from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2019.

Table criteria

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# Institution Share 2018 Share 2019 Count 2019 Change in Adjusted Share 2018-2019*
1 University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa 6.57 7.24 33 6.7%
2 University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits University), South Africa 1.88 1.97 13 1.8%
3 University of Johannesburg (UJ), South Africa 3.85 1.59 11 -60.1%
4 Rhodes University (RU), South Africa 0.67 1.09 13 56.9%
5 University of Pretoria (UP), South Africa 0.85 1.03 12 17.0%
6 University of South Africa (UNISA), South Africa 0.16 0.90 2 437.4%
7 Stellenbosch University (SU), South Africa 1.77 0.57 12 -68.7%
8 University of the Free State (UFS), South Africa 0.08 0.51 3 492.6%
9 Nelson Mandela University (NMU), South Africa 0.21 0.47 5 120.3%
10 University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), South Africa 0.50 0.27 6 -48.4%
11 University of the Western Cape (UWC), South Africa 0.07 0.25 2 245.3%
12 University of Venda (UNIVEN), South Africa 0.04 0.11 5 177.0%
13 North-West University (NWU), South Africa 0.50 0.10 2 -80.8%
14 University of Fort Hare (UFH), South Africa 0.04 0.08 4 116.1%
15 Akademia, South Africa – 0.03 1 N/A
16 University of Limpopo, South Africa – 0.02 1 N/A
17 African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), South Africa – 0.00 1 N/A

Footnote

Each year, the Nature Index publishes tables based on counts of high-quality research outputs in the previous calendar year. Users please note:

  1. The data behind the tables are based on a relatively small proportion of total research papers, they cover the natural sciences only and outputs are non-normalized (that is, they don’t reflect the size of the country or institution, or its overall research output).
  2. The Nature Index is one indicator of institutional research performance. The metrics of Count and Share used to order Nature Index listings are based on an institution’s or country’s publication output in 82 natural-science journals, selected on reputation by an independent panel of leading scientists in their fields.
  3. Nature Index recognizes that many other factors must be taken into account when considering research quality and institutional performance; Nature Index metrics alone should not be used to assess institutions or individuals.
  4. Nature Index data and methods are transparent and available under a creative commons licence at nature.com/nature-index/.

The Nature Index database undergoes regular updating, corrections, adjustment of institutional hierarchies, and removal of retracted papers and thus the live website can differ from the frozen annual tables.

*The change in adjusted Share accounts for the small annual variation in the total number of articles in Nature Index journals. Share values have been adjusted to 2021 levels to calculate the percentage change. For more information on the adjustment, please see the Adjusted metric explainer.


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