Top performers are holding their own in Australia’s research landscape

Count and Share: A tool to track and analyse the research output of countries and universities in the Nature Index based on their contribution to the journal and country

A description of the terminology and methodology used in this supplement, and a guide to the functionality that is available free online at natureindex.com.

Count and Share are used to track research output. Each article is given a count of 1 for having at least one author from the country/territory. This is the case regardless of the number of authors an article has, and it means that the same article can contribute to the Count of multiple countries/territories or institutions.

Adjusted Share accounts for the small annual variation in the total number of articles in the Nature Index journals. It is arrived at by calculating the percentage difference in the total number of articles in the Index in a given year relative to the number of articles in a base year and adjusting Share values to the base year levels.

The sum of each institution’s shares on the papers to which they contributed is what is referred to as the bilateral collaboration score. A bilateral collaboration between any two institutions or countries can lead to the publication of one article in a journal.

Each query will return a profile page that lists the country or institution’s recent outputs, from which it is possible to drill down for more information. The journal can be used to display the articles. The outputs are organized by subject area. The institutions are listed on the pages as well as their relationship with other organizations. Users can track an institution’s performance over time, create their own indexes and export table data.

The Share of the top institutions in Australia is shown by subject area. Two of the University of Florida, one of the University of New South Wales, and one of the University of Melbourne are related to health sciences.

Geographical proximity in Australian research has led to a decline in adjusted Share in the top 20 countries in the Nature Index between 2015 and 2023

Over the last year, the increase in open access, or free to read, papers has been a big change. In 2015, 65% of ARC-funded publications were pay-to-read, according to Navigator, and 28% were free to read (the status of the remaining per cent is unknown). In the early 2000s when free-to-read papers went up to 42%, the numbers stayed the same. In the next few years, more and more of the papers will be free to read and 29% will be pay-to-read.

The biggest topic areas in ARC-funded research between 2015 and 2024 are computational models and algorithms, and clinical studies and public health, accounting for 103,840 and 101,586 publications, respectively, of the total 212,979 for the period, according to Navigator (papers can be related to one or more topic and subtopic). There were 101,866 publications that were related to mathematical modelling and numerical methods. In clinical studies and public health, there are over 78,000 publications related to the clinical interventions and health services research.

Between 2022 and 2023, Australia recorded the steepest drop in adjusted Share (9.4%) among the top 20 countries in the Nature Index, signalling trouble for its research sector. For the first time since 2018, Australia dropped from 10th place to 12th in 2023, overtaken by India and Italy.

The institutions that recorded the largest change in adjusted Share for the period are shown. The changes are relatively modest, which reflects the country’s overall decline in Share in the Nature Index as it struggles to compete with the likes of China and India, which are among a small handful of top-20 countries to achieve positive growth in adjusted Share from 2022 to 2023.

The University of Melbourne formed four of the top five partnerships. Each pair of collaborating institutions is based in the same city, highlighting the importance of geographical proximity in research.