KOREA FOUNDATION

Korea Ranks 7th in Nature Index

On the 2023 Nature Index for natural sciences, released by the world’s leading weekly science journal, Nature, Korea ranked seventh—one place higher than the previous year. Ninety percent of the nation’s contributions to natural science publications in 2022 were concentrated on physics (48 percent) and chemistry (42 percent).

The Nature Index is calculated by measuring contributions to research articles published in 82 natural science journals, selected by an independent group of researchers.

China topped the index for the first time with 19,373 “Shares,” overtaking the United States which ranked second this year with 17,610 Shares. The Share unit considers each nation’s number of contributions to the selected natural science journals. For instance, an article published entirely by a Korea-based researcher would yield a Share of 1 for Korea, whereas for an article with 10 authors, each author’s country would receive a Share of 0.1. The US was followed by Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and France, while Korea was followed by Canada, Switzerland and India.

NatureNature Index