Beijing Defends its Title as World's Top City for Scientific Research

At a conference in Zhongguancun in Haidian district last week, The Nature Index announced that Beijing would be keeping its spot as the top-ranked city for scientific research for the fifth consecutive year.

The Nature Index is an arm of the prestigious scientific journal, Nature. The index is essentially a database of scholarly authors, their affiliations, and the articles they publish across 82 high-quality journals. As you might guess from this description, its award for the top city is based on just one criterion – the number of articles to be published throughout the year in the journals it tracks.

With the vast amount of resources poured into Beijing universities and the city’s thriving technological sector, it was only a matter of time before the Chinese capital overtook New York as the most productive city for science, and in 2016 Beijing did indeed move up from third to first place. Up to that point, Beijing had already achieved the number one spot in the fields of chemistry, physics, and environmental sciences, but had lagged behind in the life sciences until a jump in the ranks in 2015 put the city over the edge. This past year, Beijingers published 6,018 articles, while New Yorkers published a measly 4,894.

Despite its high productivity, however, the city does not, apparently, meet the highest of standards for other criteria. The index also ranked factors such as sustainability, in which Beijing scored fourth among the top five, though it scored relatively well in competitiveness, research and development, and innovation, although New York took the top spot in the world for each of those categories.

Meanwhile, Shanghai now ranks fifth for the third year in a row, having seen a massive jump in physics and environmental sciences productivity. The coastal city’s numbers appear to still be skyrocketing, so Beijing should expect some fierce competition nearer to home in the years to come.

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Images: Ousa Chea (via UNSPLASH) Nature.com