Research surge lifts the nation back into top 10
Australia has reclaimed its place in the top 10 countries for high-quality science research.
Australia has reclaimed its place in the top 10 countries for high-quality science research, according to the latest Nature Index due for global release tomorrow.
Australia’s quality research output last year rose by 8.3 per cent compared with the previous year, according to figures from Nature Index, which measures the research output of individual researchers and their affiliated institutions across 82 prestigious journals.
“There’s been a very positive development overall in Australia with a significant increase in output,” Nature Index founder David Swinbanks said.
MORE: Aussie universities among world best: The Global Top 50
The latest data returned Australia to the No 10 position it occupied in 2015, before slipping to No 11 in 2016 and 2017.
The data shows Australia does even better in a ranking of research output per capita.
Because of its small population Australia ranks fifth in the world on this measure.
Nature Index named Queensland University of Technology as the biggest improver among Australian universities from 2015 to 2018. This year QUT sits at No 72 in the world’s top 100 of “rising institutions” in the Nature Index, the only Australian institution to achieve this status.
It increased the number of papers published in the top 82 journals from 11.25 in 2015 to 27.85 last year (using the fractional counting system), a gain of 16.6. This feat was particularly noteworthy because the list also includes non-university research institutions and companies (particularly in the pharmaceutical sector) that publish research in top journals.
Nature Index also created a ranking of all institutions, including non-universities, based on the absolute quantity of their research output. Three Australian universities made the global top 100 in this list with the University of Queensland leading at 79, Monash University (98) and UNSW (100).
When the list is narrowed to universities only, their ranking improves with University of Queensland at 69, Monash University (87) and University of NSW (89). Following them come the University of Melbourne (113), Australian National University (118) and the University of Sydney (168).
Nature Index measured the number of scientific papers published in 82 leading journals in the areas of life science, physical sciences, earth and environmental sciences, and chemistry. The journals are chosen by committees of experts, aided by a global survey of leading science researchers.
The index measured the number of papers published in the 82 journals by author or institution.
Because researchers usually work in teams, each author on a paper is credited with an equal fraction of the whole paper. Institutional scores are calculated from the fractional counts of their affiliated researchers.
The latest data from Nature Index also revealed research performance in each of the four areas of the sciences covered. Among Australian universities, the top improvers in volume of quality research were the University of Queensland in life sciences, Griffith University in physical sciences, Curtin University in earth and environmental sciences, and UNSW in chemistry.
Join the conversation
Minister canes unis over effect of early offers
As year 12 students approach their final exams, one education minister is worried that early university offers have encouraged them to slack off.
Read more
Uni debacle was always going to get ugly
Our two oldest universities are both loudly left-wing campuses – they have activist staff and student groups where the party-line is settler-colonist theory – in which Israel as is has no right to exist.
Read more