2021 tables: Institutions - Nature & Science - academic

The 2021 tables are based on Nature Index data from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020.

Table criteria

# Institution Share 2019 Share 2020 Count 2020 Change in Adjusted Share* 2019–2020
1 Harvard University, United States of America (USA) 80.18 72.82 239 -17.6%
2 Stanford University, United States of America (USA) 41.48 44.35 135 -3.0%
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), United States of America (USA) 42.19 39.22 163 -15.6%
4 University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), United States of America (USA) 20.91 23.45 76 1.8%
5 University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), United States of America (USA) 24.83 20.24 84 -26.0%
6 California Institute of Technology (Caltech), United States of America (USA) 19.39 20.21 66 -5.4%
7 University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), United States of America (USA) 12.81 19.80 70 40.3%
8 University of Oxford, United Kingdom (UK) 14.19 18.01 103 15.2%
9 University of Cambridge, United Kingdom (UK) 15.36 16.30 104 -3.7%
10 Princeton University, United States of America (USA) 17.37 15.97 59 -16.5%
11 University of Toronto (U of T), Canada 11.74 15.62 54 20.7%
12 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), Switzerland 20.77 15.10 63 -34.0%
13 Yale University, United States of America (USA) 16.35 15.06 64 -16.4%
14 Columbia University in the City of New York (CU), United States of America (USA) 17.30 13.60 65 -28.6%
15 Cornell University, United States of America (USA) 21.30 13.51 65 -42.4%
16 University of Pennsylvania (Penn), United States of America (USA) 15.04 12.85 61 -22.4%
17 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), United States of America (USA) 5.85 12.05 54 87.0%
18 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland 5.43 11.65 30 94.7%
19 University of Washington (UW), United States of America (USA) 12.73 10.92 68 -22.1%
20 Tsinghua University, China 15.36 10.79 56 -36.2%
21 New York University (NYU), United States of America (USA) 8.33 10.72 41 16.8%
22 The Rockefeller University, United States of America (USA) 7.22 10.48 39 31.7%
23 The University of Tokyo (UTokyo), Japan 13.21 10.46 61 -28.1%
24 Northwestern University (NU), United States of America (USA) 8.45 10.40 33 11.7%
25 Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS), Israel 8.34 10.27 22 11.7%
26 The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern Medical Center), United States of America (USA) 12.94 10.21 20 -28.4%
27 Peking University (PKU), China 8.83 9.64 43 -0.9%
28 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), United States of America (USA) 11.59 9.47 64 -25.9%
29 The University of Chicago (UChicago), United States of America (USA) 16.27 9.11 45 -49.1%
30 Duke University, United States of America (USA) 6.85 9.10 56 20.7%
31 University of Michigan (U-M), United States of America (USA) 10.58 9.05 57 -22.4%
32 The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), United States of America (USA) 3.95 8.73 35 100.4%
33 Imperial College London (ICL), United Kingdom (UK) 2.69 8.50 61 186.5%
34 University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder), United States of America (USA) 6.84 8.37 35 11.0%
35 Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS), MSHS, United States of America (USA) 2.63 8.25 44 184.8%
36 UCL, United Kingdom (UK) 8.64 7.77 56 -18.4%
37 McGill University, Canada 5.77 7.62 42 20.0%
38 Heidelberg University (Uni Heidelberg), Germany 4.07 7.58 45 69.1%
39 The University of Manchester (UoM), United Kingdom (UK) 5.43 7.21 29 20.6%
40 Johns Hopkins University (JHU), United States of America (USA) 11.89 7.21 57 -45.0%
41 Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL), United States of America (USA) 6.65 6.91 49 -5.8%
42 Fudan University, China 4.84 6.81 33 27.8%
43 University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), United States of America (USA) 4.30 6.71 24 41.8%
44 Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (LMU), Germany 6.39 6.36 30 -9.6%
45 University of Copenhagen (UCPH), Denmark 5.18 6.31 43 10.6%
46 University of Virginia (UVA), United States of America (USA) 1.00 6.12 26 456.7%
47 University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), China 7.38 6.07 32 -25.4%
48 The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom (UK) 2.25 5.96 44 140.3%
49 The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), United States of America (USA) 3.49 5.83 32 51.7%
50 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), United States of America (USA) 4.95 5.77 26 5.8%
51 University of Basel (UB), Switzerland 6.97 5.71 22 -25.7%
52 University of Bern (UniBE), Switzerland 1.76 5.41 30 178.9%
53 University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison), United States of America (USA) 2.27 5.39 22 115.4%
54 Zhejiang University (ZJU), China 5.46 5.31 23 -11.8%
55 Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium 3.28 5.30 37 46.6%
56 University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), Australia 2.37 5.06 38 93.9%
57 Brandeis University, United States of America (USA) 0.38 4.79 13 1055.5%
58 Kyoto University, Japan 4.95 4.71 20 -13.7%
59 Michigan State University (MSU), United States of America (USA) 1.05 4.50 21 290.4%
60 ShanghaiTech University, China 0.99 4.38 20 301.5%
61 University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), United States of America (USA) 1.12 4.37 35 253.8%
62 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), China 5.04 4.36 56 -21.5%
63 University of Zurich (UZH), Switzerland 7.22 4.29 39 -46.1%
64 National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore 2.93 4.23 34 30.8%
65 University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), United States of America (USA) 7.46 4.19 31 -49.0%
66 The University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada 4.68 4.18 30 -18.9%
67 Texas A&M University (TAMU), United States of America (USA) 1.17 4.07 26 215.0%
68 Sorbonne University, France 2.01 4.07 67 83.6%
69 The University of Queensland (UQ), Australia 3.23 4.07 35 14.3%
70 The University of Hong Kong (HKU), China 0.64 4.06 24 477.9%
71 Stockholm University, Sweden 0.46 4.06 32 704.3%
72 Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea 1.61 4.03 12 127.9%
73 Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), United States of America (USA) 1.24 4.00 24 194.0%
74 Radboud University Nijmegen (RU), Netherlands 1.08 3.95 18 231.0%
75 Monash University, Australia 3.22 3.67 25 3.5%
76 Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Netherlands 1.54 3.66 10 115.7%
77 University of Göttingen, Germany 3.68 3.64 26 -10.3%
78 Seoul National University (SNU), South Korea 1.28 3.63 23 156.3%
79 University of California, Davis (UC Davis), United States of America (USA) 3.03 3.61 23 8.1%
80 University of Bristol (UoB), United Kingdom (UK) 2.39 3.51 20 33.0%
81 Emory University, United States of America (USA) 1.44 3.45 24 118.1%
82 University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), United States of America (USA) 2.27 3.43 23 37.1%
83 Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany 2.45 3.39 29 25.9%
84 University of Tübingen (Uni Tübingen), Germany 1.31 3.38 21 133.2%
85 Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin), Germany 2.94 3.32 52 2.6%
86 University of Cincinnati (UC), United States of America (USA) 2.46 3.31 7 21.9%
87 University of Minnesota (UMN), United States of America (USA) 1.47 3.30 28 104.2%
88 University of Southern California (USC), United States of America (USA) 2.11 3.26 28 40.3%
89 University of Montreal (UdeM), Canada 1.44 3.25 30 105.0%
90 Karolinska Institute (KI), Sweden 4.67 3.24 32 -37.0%
91 Goethe University Frankfurt (GU), Germany 1.93 3.17 18 48.9%
92 The University of Arizona (Arizona), United States of America (USA) 1.44 3.16 22 99.1%
93 Nagoya University, Japan 1.56 3.12 12 81.0%
94 Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), China 3.37 3.05 24 -17.7%
95 Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium 0.59 3.02 16 363.0%
96 University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School (UMass Chan Medical School), United States of America (USA) 2.71 3.00 21 0.5%
97 Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea 1.57 3.00 14 73.4%
98 Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI), Israel 1.00 2.99 16 172.7%
99 Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Einstein), United States of America (USA) 2.04 2.98 13 32.8%
100 Humboldt University of Berlin (HU Berlin), Germany 1.27 2.95 45 111.3%

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 through 2022, in 2023 64 health-science journals were added to the Index. The 146 journals in the Nature Index were 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/.
  5. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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 2022 levels to calculate the percentage change. For more information on the adjustment, please see the Adjusted metric explainer.