Palacký University has improved its position in the international Nature Index ranking of universities and research institutions, which evaluates their publication outputs in the area of natural sciences. Thanks to its results last year, it advanced 6.3% and moved from the 251st to the 237th position in Europe. In terms of numbers of articles, it is in 189th place; its highest number of publications are in the physical sciences.
The rankings are made by the Springer Nature publishing house on the basis of the 82 most prestigious journals according to the Web of Science database. This is a small but highly cited subset of the total number of publications in natural sciences. The Nature Index ranks according to four scientific disciplines: life sciences, chemistry, the physical sciences, and Earth and environmental sciences. Outputs are not standardized according to the size of institutions.
“Palacký University today is one of the five most important research institutions in the country. In supporting science and research, with an emphasis on quality and massive internationalisation, we are rising not only in global rankings, but we are also fulfilling a basic strategic goal which university leadership has established – to secure UP a place in the elite club of research universities. This is why I am pleased that our results in the recently published Nature Index show the quality of our publication outputs and prove our position among the best research institutions in the country,” Rector Jaroslav Miller said, commenting on the results. He also emphasised that this ranking only takes into account a selection of the best outputs, which means roughly one percent of all natural science journals contained in the Web of Science – all of which have gone through the most demanding peer review processes.
UP scientists in the physical sciences boast the greatest output of highly cited papers published in prestigious journals in the past year (62). These were followed by papers in chemistry (16), life sciences (10), and Earth and environmental sciences (4).
The Nature Index ranked 4,800 institutions. The Czech Republic was in the same place as last year, in 26th place (15th in Europe), but as opposed to last year however it dropped 3.6 percent. Czech institutions in the Top 500 were the Czech Academy of Sciences and Charles University Prague. Masaryk University in Brno also bettered UP in the ranking. For more information, click here.