Nature Index: Is This the Future of Science?

The Nature Index ranks countries and institutions according to their publications in the most highly reputed scientific journals. It is  a reliable guide to performance at the highest levels of research.
Here are the academic institutions in the current top 100 that have risen or fallen by ten per cent or more in the latest edition. The indicator is adjusted fractional count 2016-2017.

The 2018 world  rank is on the left. The percentage increase or decrease is on the right.

I think I see a few patterns here.

Rising Institutions

14.  National Institutes of Health, USA   10.0%
20.  Kyoto University  15.1%
31.  University of Chinese Academy of Sciences 64.8%
37.  National University of Singapore  10.5%
41.  Indian Institutes of Technology (all of them)  28%
44.  Fudan University 11.1%
61.  Texas A and M University  23.7%
62.  Shanghai Jiao Tong University 30.4%
68.  Wuhan University 31.3%
69.  University of Edinburgh 11.5%
72   University of Bristol  25.3%
74.  University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center 20.5%
76.  Sun Yat-sen University, China 26.6%
81.  Xiamen University 18.7%
86.  University of Utah   22.2%
95.  Sichuan University  24%
98.  Wurzburg Universit 19.7

Falling Institutions

11.  University of Oxford -15.2%
24.  Yale University  -13.6%
38.  University of Illinois Urbana Champagne  -12%
43.  EPF Lausanne -11.2%
47.  University of Minnesota   -15.5%
55.  Leibniz Association, Germany  -10%
57.  Duke University -15.3%
82.  Mcgill University -15.9%
84.  Tohoku University -18.3%
88.  Rutgers University -17.3%
89.  Technical University Munich  -11.6%
91,  University of Zurich   -11.8%
93.  NASA, USA  -16.5%

Responses to the QS Academic Survey

QS has published the percentage of responses to this year's academic survey (which is about the best universities for research) from different countries. 

The table below combines the percentages in the surveys of 2007, 2013 and 2018 (for the "2019" rankings) ranked by the percentages for 2013. The data for 2009 and 2013 are from a previous post.

There are some interesting things here. The UK has more responses than France and Germany combined. 

There are more responses from Malaysia than from China.

There are more responses from Kazakhstan than from India.

There are almost as many responses from Australia, Canada and New Zealand as there are from the USA.

The number of responses from these countries has risen by a percentage point or more since 2013: Russia, Malaysia, Iraq, Kazakhstan.

The number of responses from these countries has fallen by a percentage point or more since 2013: USA, Brazil, Italy, Germany, Hungary. 


Table: Percentage of responses to QS academic survey.

country	2007	2013	2018
USA	10.0	17.4	8.5
UK	5.6	6.5	7.0
Brazil	1.1	6.3	3.3
Italy	3.3	4.7	3.5
Germany	3.0	3.8	2.5
Canada	4.0	3.4	3.3
Australia	3.5	3.2	4.0
France	2.9	2.4	2.0
Japan	1.9	2.9	3.5
Spain	2.3	2.7	3.1
Mexico	0.8	2.6	2.3
Hungary	--	2.0	0.9
Russia	0.7	1.7	4.0
India	3.5	1.7	2.6
Chile	--	1.7	2.0
Ireland	1.5	1.6	0.9
Malaysia	3.2	1.5	4.6
Belgium	2.6	1.4	0.7
Hong Kong	1.9	1.4	1.5
Taiwan	0.7	1.3	2.0
Netherlands	0.6	1.2	0.9
New Zealand	4.1	1.2	1.0
Singapore	2.5	1.2	0.8
China	1.6	1.1	1.8
Portugal	0.9	1.1	1.0
Colombia	--	1.1	1.6
Argentina	0.7	1.0	0.8
South Africa	0.7	1.0	0.8
Denmark	1.2	0.9	0.5
Sweden	1.7	0.9	0.8
Switzerland	1.5	0.8	0.7
Austria	1.3	0.8	0.5
Turkey	1.1	0.7	0.8
Indonesia	1.2	0.5	0.9
Philippines	1.8	0.3	0.5
Iraq	--	0.2	1.4
Kazakhstan	--	0.9	3.0
South Korea	?	?	4.0

Ranking rankings: Crass materialism

As the number and scope of university rankings increase it is time to start thinking about how to rank the rankers.

Indicators for global rankings might include number of universities ranked (Webometrics in 1st place), number of indicators (Round University Ranking), bias, and stability.

There could also be an indicator for crass materialism. Here is a candidate for first place. CNBC quotes a report from Wealth-X (supposedly downloadable, good luck) and lists the top ten universities, all in the USA, for billionaires. Apparently, the ranking also includes universities outside the US.

1.  Harvard
2.  Stanford
3.  Pennsylvania
4.  Columbia
5.  MIT
6.  Cornell
7.  Yale
8= Southern California
8= Chicago
10 Michigan.

Where did the top data scientists study?

The website efinancialcareers has a list of the top twenty data scientists in finance and banking. This looks like a subjective list and another writer might come up with a different set of experts. Even so it is quite interesting.

Their degrees are mainly in things like engineering, computer science and maths. There is only one each in business, economics and finance.

The institutions where they studied are:
Stanford (three)
University College London (three)
Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble
Oxford
Leonard Stern School of Business, New York University
University of Mexico
Universite Paris Dauphine
Ecole Polytechnique
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
California State University
Indian Institute of Science
Johns Hopkins University
Institute of Management Development and Research, India
University of Illinois
University of Pittsburgh
Indian Institute of Technology.

Harvard, MIT and Cambridge are absent but there are three Indian Institutes,  three French schools and some non-Ivy US places like RPI and the Universities of Pittsburgh and Illinois.