The UB is included in the top 100 institutions of the Nature Index 2014 Global
The University of Barcelona is the first Spanish higher education institution included in the bibliometric ranking Nature Index 2014 Global, which tracks the affiliations of high quality scientific articles published in 68 science journals of the Nature Publishing Group (NPG).
The University of Barcelona is the first Spanish higher education institution included in the bibliometric ranking Nature Index 2014 Global, which tracks the affiliations of high quality scientific articles published in 68 science journals of the Nature Publishing Group (NPG).
The Nature Index 2014 Global includes the articles published in a selection of journals in the fields of physics, chemistry, geology, biology and medicine between 1 September 2013 and 31 August 2014. The index Article Count (AC) indicates the number of articles signed by, at least, one author from the institution that is being evaluated. The UB has 431 articles and occupies position 94 in the world ranking and position 70 among universities.
The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) is the first-ranked Spanish institution in the world ranking; it occupies position 5, with 1,622 articles. The UB ranks second followed by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) (position 126, with 357 articles) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) (position 132, with 340 articles).
Regarding the total number of articles published by the UB, 286 of them are focused on Physical Sciences, 90 on Life Sciences, 60 on Chemistry and 14 on Earth and Environmental Sciences. The Nature Index Global 2014 also includes a weight classification, the Fractional Count (FC). This index takes into account the relative contribution of each author to an article. Here the UB ranks 192th, with a FC value of 76.77. In the index Weighted Fractional Count (WFC), which applies a weighting to the FC in order to adjust for the over-representation of papers from astronomy and astrophysics, the UB occupies position 204 in the world ranking and ranks first among Spanish universities and second among Spanish institutions, after the CSIC.
The country rankings are based on the number of papers published from institutions located in a country. Spain is included in the top 10 countries; it ranks 9th. The ranking Nature Index 2014 Global includes a measuring element —financial efficiency— that considers three variables: countryʼs FC and gross domestic investment in research and innovation. Spain ranks third among European countries. This means that its results are very positive taking into account the resources invested.
According to NPG, the 68 journals included in the first release of the Nature Index represent less than 1% of the journals covering natural sciences in the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) but account for close to 30% of total citations to natural science journals.