Salk Institute ranks as one of the leading scientific “stars” in North America with high-quality output that has grown particularly fast, according to a new report by Nature Research.
The data, released July 27, in a report called the Nature Index, use a series of metrics related to papers published in the last few years to evaluate over 8,000 scientific institutions across the globe. The index, designed to be a tool for assessing research performance, charts which countries and institutions are the most efficient at producing high-quality results based on publications in top-tier journals.
Salk Institute is listed among the top 25 institutions in all of North America in the “Regional Stars” section of the index, along with other esteemed centers such as Stanford University, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the California Institute for Biomedical Research. These institutions dramatically increased their contribution to a selection of top natural science journals from 2012-2015.
“While the Salk Institute has always been a top-ranking research organization, the last few years have seen incredible growth in our number of scientific discoveries thanks to our phenomenal faculty, scientists and staff, and advances in technology and fundraising support,” says Elizabeth Blackburn, president of the Salk Institute.
First launched in November 2014, the Nature Index database tracks the author affiliations of research articles published in a group of 68 high-quality natural science journals, which have been selected by independent panels of active scientists. Responses from more than 2,800 individuals to a large-scale survey were used to validate the selections.
The Nature Index uses three counts of article output: article count (AC), which assigns a rank of one for each article that has at least one author from that institute; fractional count (FC), which takes into account the relative contribution of each author to an article; and weighted fractional count (WFC), which applies a weighting to fractional count to adjust for the overrepresentation of papers from astronomy and astrophysics.
David Swinbanks, founder of the Nature Index, said: “With four years of data already behind it, the Nature Index is an increasingly powerful tool to assess research performance. By identifying these rising stars, we’re given an insight into which new emerging institutions are likely to play a role in addressing some of the globe’s most pressing challenges. Providing researchers and institutions with this data, through the index’s freely accessible website, is another example of how Nature Research is working to meet the scientific community’s needs.”
More information about the Nature Index is available at natureindex.com.
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is one of the world’s preeminent basic research institutions, where internationally renowned faculty probes fundamental life science questions in a unique, collaborative, and creative environment. Focused both on discovery and on mentoring future generations of researchers, Salk scientists make groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of cancer, aging, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and infectious diseases by studying neuroscience, genetics, cell and plant biology. and related disciplines.
