Nature Research’s ranked Vietnam tenth in Asia-Pacific publications appearing in leading scientific journals from January 1 to December 31, 2019. Vietnam has held this position since 2017.
Compared with the other Southeast Asian countries, Vietnam has dropped 4.9% since 2018 and now ranks below Singapore and Thailand, but above Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Myanmar, Cambodia, Brunei, and Laos.
Some academics maintain that Malaysia has many times more international publications than Vietnam and the highest increase of all, but the Nature Index shows that Malaysia seems to focus more on quantity than quality, because their number of high-quality rated papers went down 13.7% compared to last year.
In the worldwide ranking of nations increasing the fastest in high-quality research, only Thailand reaches the top 10. Heading this ranking is China, followed by Norway and the Czech Republic. Thailand also shows a rapid increase in Chemistry related publications, ranked fourth.
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The Nature Index also ranked thirty Vietnamese research institutes in 2019. The three leading ones are:
1. Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology
2. Duy Tan University
3. Hanoi University of Science and Technology
A new addition to this year’s top 10 is Phenikaa University, in fifth place.
Leaders by field in Vietnam are:
- Earth & Environmental Sciences: Hanoi University of Science and Technology
- Life Sciences: Hospital of Tropical Diseases
- Chemistry: National University Ho Chi Minh city
- Physical Sciences: Duy Tan University
The Nature Index also ranks the 500 leading universities and research institutes in 34 nations, with the US, China, and Germany contributing to more than 50% of the total.
In the top 100 “emerging” research institutes, China leads with 84 schools, highlighting how high-quality research is developing so rapidly there. However, the number of emerging institutes in the US is still higher than that of China in three out of four fields: Earth & Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences and Physical Sciences.
The Nature Index tracks author addresses and relationships between research organizations and records Natural Science publications in 82 of the leading journals, selected by independent researchers.
The Nature Index ranking is based on two indicators:
- Article Count (AC): absolute number of publications
- Fractional Count (FC) or Share: fractional contribution of each university, research institution, or hospital or nation. Among these, only the FC is used for this ranking.
The rankings are continuously adjusted to include only the twelve most recent months, by research institutes, countries/territories, emerging countries and emerging research institutes. In addition, rankings are calculated for:
- Earth & Environmental Sciences
- Life Sciences
- Physical Sciences
- Chemistry.
The Nature Index only surveys 82 journals and is normally considered a basic indicator of high-quality research in the natural, health and life sciences. Universities can achieve high rankings if they staff themselves with leading researchers.
(Media Center)