SINGAPORE - The National University of Singapore (NUS) came in 39th place in a new ranking by international publishing company Nature Publishing Group, making it the highest-ranked Singapore institution in the index.
Nanyang Technological University (NTU) was ranked 42nd, while the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research was ranked 133rd.
Ranked as the world's top institution was China's Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The inaugural index looks at the high quality science outputs of 20,000 institutions around the world, tracking the author affiliations of nearly 60,000 high quality scientific articles published per year.
The current index differs from the Nature Publishing Index, which was announced earlier in March this year. The Nature Publishing Index was calculated from research articles published in 18 journals by Nature Publishing Group.
But the Nature Index took into account articles chosen from 68 nature science journals. The journals were were picked by researchers as publications they would choose to publish their best work. The journals were selected by two independent panels of active scientists, chaired by Professor John Morton from University College London and Dr Yin-Biao Sun from Kings College.
At the country level, Singapore was ranked 17th in the Nature Index. In first place was the United States.
The new Nature Index also ranked institutions according to four disciplines: life sciences, earth and environmental sciences, chemistry, and physical sciences.
NTU was ranked 12th for chemistry, and 39th for physical sciences. NUS came in 31st for both the chemistry and physical sciences ranking.
NUS president Tan Chorh Chuan said the rankings reflect the quality and impact of the university's research. "Several NUS research centres and programmes are international leaders in areas ranging from graphene and new materials to lipidomics and medicine, as well as in humanities and social science research on Asia," he said.
Professor Bertil Andersson, president of NTU, said the rankings are a "testament of NTU's success in growing and nurturing the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, which was established just 10 years ago".
The Nature Publishing Group runs the Nature journals, covering mainly the physical, chemical and life sciences.
