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UNSW Sydney has maintained its position in the top three Australian institutions for contribution to scientific research in the 2018 Nature Index.

UNSW ranked third in Australia out of the 180 institutions that contributed to high-quality scientific research papers published in a selection of the world’s best scientific journals in 2017. Australia ranked 11th worldwide for research output.

“This result validates our sharp focus on quality outputs, and is impressive against the background of the continued rise in the rankings of leading Chinese universities,” said Professor Nicholas Fisk, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research at UNSW.

The Nature Index tracks by institution the research published in 82 high-quality journals each year, counting both the number of papers and the share of authorship of each paper. It is a freely accessible database of author affiliations collated from research articles published in an independently selected group of high-quality science journals. The Annual Tables show calendar year output in Nature Index journals for the last three years, to reveal the countries and institutions that are leading the way in publishing high-quality global science.

The index found that UNSW ranked first in NSW. In the earth and environmental sciences discipline, UNSW ranked as the top Australian institution and 34th among academic institutes globally.

UNSW continued to show strong collaboration with international institutions and researchers, with 64% of collaborations with international universities.

“We have seen UNSW rising up the ranks of Nature Index since we began tracking data in 2012 and now it stands first in Sydney and New South Wales and third in Australia,” said David Swinbanks, founder of the Nature Index. “This is testimony to its growing output in high-quality natural science research, complementing its long standing strengths in applied sciences and engineering. There is some great research being done at UNSW, such as the work of Michelle Simmons’ group on quantum computing, that contributes to articles in the Index.”