2022 Leading institutions - fields of research*

The 2022 Research Leaders are based on Nature Index data from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021.

Table criteria

Position Institution Location Share Count
1 National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) Italy 79.87 387
2 Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) China 70.68 369
3 Max Planck Society Germany 68.48 339
4 French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) France 61.33 487
5 Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres Germany 60.84 348
6 Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Russia 47.63 257
7 University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) China 42.68 169
8 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) United States of America (USA) 39.56 192
9 Harvard University United States of America (USA) 38.74 147
10 Stanford University United States of America (USA) 38.27 136
11 Peking University (PKU) China 35.60 202
12 University of Cambridge United Kingdom (UK) 33.61 120
13 University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) United States of America (USA) 32.61 180
14 The University of Tokyo (UTokyo) Japan 31.23 156
15 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) Switzerland 29.76 106
16 European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Switzerland 29.03 220
17 University of Oxford United Kingdom (UK) 28.36 152
18 Princeton University United States of America (USA) 27.43 123
19 Homi Bhabha National Institute (HBNI) India 26.92 100
20 Institute for Corpuscular Physics (IFIC) Spain 26.26 120
21 Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) Spain 26.12 221
22 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) China 25.63 224
23 Tsinghua University China 23.69 184
24 Technical University of Munich (TUM) Germany 23.29 113
25 Imperial College London (ICL) United Kingdom (UK) 20.91 124
26 Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) China 20.40 117
27 Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS) Israel 20.19 73
28 California Institute of Technology (Caltech) United States of America (USA) 20.17 95
29 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) United States of America (USA) 20.14 122
30 Kyoto University Japan 20.01 78
31 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) United States of America (USA) 19.84 160
32 Durham University United Kingdom (UK) 19.54 80
33 Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU) China 19.52 91
34 Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) United States of America (USA) 18.77 97
35 University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) United States of America (USA) 16.91 111
36 University of Hamburg (UHH) Germany 16.83 125
37 National Research Center Kurchatov Institute (NRCKI) Russia 16.54 179
38 Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) United States of America (USA) 15.93 101
39 Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (IIT) Israel 15.80 65
40 University of Valencia (UV) Spain 15.78 126
41 Beihang University (BUAA) China 15.50 103
42 Heidelberg University (Uni Heidelberg) Germany 15.48 118
43 University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) United States of America (USA) 15.46 81
44 Tel Aviv University (TAU) Israel 15.26 79
45 RWTH Aachen University (RWTH Aachen) Germany 15.04 102
46 University of Lisbon (ULISBOA) Portugal 14.91 75
47 Cornell University United States of America (USA) 14.87 70
48 Lund University (LU) Sweden 14.74 81
49 Columbia University in the City of New York (CU) United States of America (USA) 14.28 67
50 University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) United States of America (USA) 14.24 101

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 research leaders.

* Field of research (FOR) tables represent an editorial selection, chosen from the four natural-sciences subject areas tracked by the Nature Index (biological sciences, physical sciences, chemistry and Earth and environmental sciences).