Sichuan University and a number of Chinese universities are rated to have much higher research quality than many prestigious universities in the USA, according to rankings from Nature.
According to the Nature Index updated in January, except for Harvard University in the USA, 9 out of the top 10 for research quality are all in China.
Immediately following is Sichuan University (SCU) in 11th place, surpassing Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA, and the University of Oxford in the UK. Meanwhile, in well-known rankings such as THE and QS for 2025, SCU is ranked 201-250 and 336, while the other three schools are mostly in the top half of the top 10.
With Nature's ranking, SCU has made a leap as two years ago it was ranked 26th. This year, SCU's research in chemistry is rated as particularly outstanding, ranking 9th in the world. Topics such as organic chemistry, chemical engineering, materials engineering, macromolecular chemistry, and materials chemistry have contributed the most to improving the university's position.
Material scientist Qu Yunpeng, visiting professor and alumnus of SCU, stated that the university has a long academic heritage, excellent teaching and research quality in several fields, especially in polymer science and engineering, biomedical engineering, mathematics, and medicine.
In addition, in recent years, the university has attracted many highly qualified scientists, increased funding, and promoted international cooperation to enhance research quality.
"These efforts have laid a solid foundation for SCU's rise on the global research map," Qu commented.
15 universities with the best research quality in the world:
Country
1.Harvard University (USA)
2.South China University of Science and Technology (China)
3.Zhejiang University (China)
4.Peking University (China)
5.Chinese Academy of Sciences (China)
6.Tsinghua University (China)
7.Nanjing University (China)
8.Shanghai University of Transportation (China)
9.Sun Yat-sen University (China)
10.Fudan University (China)
The Nature Index ranks research organizations based on their contributions to publications in the most influential scientific journals in the world.
5 main fields measured are: biology, chemistry, earth and environmental science, health science, and physics. Two types of scores are used for ranking, including the number of papers with a representative from the institution and their score in them.
According to Nature - a prestigious scientific journal over 150 years old, China is leading the world in research in chemistry, earth-environmental science, and physics, ranking second in biology and health science. In fields where China has a low number of studies, their contributions to high-impact works (according to citation counts) are also comparable to many strong countries.
(According to SCMP, Nature, Springer Nature)
