Nature Index expands to applied and social sciences with release of 2026 Research Leaders tables
Nature Index now covers seven subject areas and adopts a recalibrated methodology
London | Beijing | New York | 10 June 2026
Today, the Nature Index has introduced updates to broaden its disciplinary coverage and refine its methodology with the release of the 2026 Research Leaders tables, marking a major step in the evolution of the database since its launch in 2014. The 2026 tables (based on full year 2025 data) show that China continues to lead globally and the East Asia region in general has outperformed others in the Nature Index.
For the first time, the Nature Index incorporates 17 applied-science journals and one conference and 15 social-science journals into the database. These new journals were selected following a global survey of more than 4,000 researchers on where they would choose to publish their most significant work. The Nature Index now tracks 177 journals plus one conference across seven subject areas, with 84% of them published outside Springer Nature.
The Nature Index has also adopted an article-level subject classification system, rather than assigning subject areas based on a journal’s primary discipline. Categorizing each article’s subject individually helps to provide a more accurate reflection of disciplinary coverage in the database.
To support comparison, articles from the newly added journals have been incorporated for 2024 and 2025, and the updated subject classification has been applied retrospectively across the database.
“With expanded disciplinary coverage and a recalibrated methodology, the Nature Index now provides a more comprehensive and precise view of high-quality research output,” said Simon Baker, Chief Editor, Nature Index. “In terms of the results, we are continuing to see extremely strong performance from China, while there is also evidence that the wider East Asia region is growing output at a faster rate than Europe and North America.”
Key regional highlights:
- China remains the world’s leading contributing country, with research output rising 22.4% from 2024 to 2025, and it is the only county in the top ten to achieve double-digit growth.
- Japan, South Korea and India all rank among the global top ten, with Japan and South Korea each recording almost 10% growth in research output, outpacing the Western countries in the top ten.
- The remaining countries in the global top ten include four European nations and two North American nations. US and Germany are among the top five across all seven subject areas, with the US leading in health sciences and social sciences, and the UK ranking in the top five in all areas except chemistry.
Institutional performance:
- The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) retains its global No. 1 position overall and across most subject areas except health sciences and social sciences.
- Nine of the top ten institutions are based in China, up from eight last year, with Zhejiang University rising to No. 2.
- Harvard University moves to No. 3 overall but leads in health and social sciences, and nine of the top ten institutions in social sciences are US-based.
- In biological sciences, Harvard ranks No. 2, and the Max Planck Society ranks No. 3. European institutions perform strongly in physical sciences, with four in the top ten, including Max Planck Society (No. 2) and Italy’s National Institute for Nuclear Physics (No. 4).
- The Helmholtz Association for Nuclear Physics ranks No. 4 in Earth & environmental sciences.
All data and analysis for this year’s Research Leaders can be found here. The data is based on full-year 2025 data.
Institutions included in the Nature Index Research Leaders 2026 rankings can request a customised badge to showcase their performance. Badges can be used across websites, reports and social media to support institutional communications, funding narratives and partnership positioning.
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Note: Nature Index recognises 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. Nature Index data and methods are transparent and available under a creative commons licence at natureindex.com
While the Nature Index Research Leader tables are a good indicator of high research output in the natural, health, applied and social sciences, readers should consider the findings alongside other scientific outputs such as data, software and intellectual property when considering research quality and institutional performance.
Nature Index is part of the Nature Research Intelligence portfolio, helping you navigate the world of high-quality scientific research, make informed research decisions and collaborate with confidence.
The Research Leaders tables are an annual release of data for the previous full calendar year (in this case 2025). Research Leaders tables from previous years are updated annually to reflect any changes to the database. This means rankings and metrics may differ from the table when first released.
Nature Index’s signature metric, Share, is a fractional count for an article allocated to an institution, city or country/region, that takes into account the proportion of authors on the article whose institutional affiliation is with that institution or location.
Adjusted Share takes account of annual variations in the total number of articles in the Nature Index when comparing Share across years.
The other main Nature Index metric is Count. A country/region or an institution is given a Count of 1 for each article that has at least one author from that country/region or institution.
For further explanation, please see natureindex.com/glossary.
The Nature Index, part of Nature Research Intelligence, is a database of author affiliations and institutional relationships. The index tracks contributions to research articles published in 178 high-quality natural, health, applied and social science publications, across many different publishers, chosen by an independent group of researchers.
The Nature Index provides absolute and fractional counts of article publication at the institutional and national level and, as such, is an indicator of global high-quality research output and collaboration. Data in the Nature Index are updated regularly, with the latest 12-month window of data (known as the Current Index) updated monthly and made available under a Creative Commons licence at natureindex.com. Each year, a snapshot of data for the previous full calendar year (known as Research Leaders) is also released. For more information, see the Nature Index FAQs and Glossary. The database is compiled by Nature Research Intelligence, part of Springer Nature.
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