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 Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) China 53.66 180
2 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) United States of America (USA) 23.63 108
3 Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres Germany 18.98 79
4 National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) United States of America (USA) 16.63 57
5 China Meteorological Administration (CMA) China 15.24 50
6 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) United States of America (USA) 14.34 67
7 French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) France 14.20 118
8 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) Switzerland 14.10 57
9 University of Washington (UW) United States of America (USA) 13.81 56
10 Columbia University in the City of New York (CU) United States of America (USA) 13.05 47
11 Nanjing University (NJU) China 12.78 43
12 University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) United States of America (USA) 12.77 59
13 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) United States of America (USA) 11.10 28
14 California Institute of Technology (Caltech) United States of America (USA) 10.92 59
15 Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) United States of America (USA) 10.86 41
16 University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) United States of America (USA) 10.67 41
17 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) China 10.16 64
18 University of California, Irvine (UCI) United States of America (USA) 10.02 34
19 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) United States of America (USA) 9.86 31
20 The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) United States of America (USA) 9.25 34
21 Lanzhou University (LZU) China 9.17 26
22 Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST) China 9.16 50
23 Peking University (PKU) China 9.15 38
24 Leibniz Association Germany 9.12 39
25 China University of Geosciences (CUG) China 9.06 25
26 Utrecht University (UU) Netherlands 8.81 35
27 The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) United States of America (USA) 8.72 30
28 Princeton University United States of America (USA) 8.45 26
29 Brown University United States of America (USA) 8.33 29
30 University of Cambridge United Kingdom (UK) 8.07 33
31 Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU) China 7.71 30
32 The University of Arizona (Arizona) United States of America (USA) 7.68 33
33 Stanford University United States of America (USA) 7.55 32
34 Wuhan University (WHU) China 7.41 13
35 University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) United States of America (USA) 7.07 33
36 Colorado State University United States of America (USA) 7.06 25
37 University of Michigan (U-M) United States of America (USA) 7.00 22
38 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) United States of America (USA) 6.85 27
39 Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) United States of America (USA) 6.55 22
40 University of Oxford United Kingdom (UK) 6.38 19
41 Fudan University China 6.33 21
42 IPSL Sciences Laboratory of Climate and the Environment (LSCE) France 6.22 22
43 Beijing Normal University (BNU) China 6.16 27
44 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) United States of America (USA) 6.09 20
45 University of Hawai'i at Manoa (UH Mānoa) United States of America (USA) 6.08 28
46 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (RU) United States of America (USA) 5.94 24
47 University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) United States of America (USA) 5.82 22
48 Zhejiang University (ZJU) China 5.78 11
49 Harvard University United States of America (USA) 5.69 27
50 Hokkaido University Japan 5.57 16

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).