Nature Index, a database complied by Nature Research, issued a supplement on May 26 summarizing China's research output and collaboration in the previous year. The supplement, titled "Nature Index 2021 China," recognizes the country's successes in space exploration, quantum technologies and cutting-edge chemistry, and includes tables of its leading institutions in various branches of natural science.

Based on the output of research articles from Dec. 1, 2019, to Nov. 30, 2020, namely article count and article share, the supplement released a table of the 100 leading Chinese institutions. Specifically, a count of one is assigned to an institution if one or more authors of the research article are from the institution. Meanwhile, the share takes into account the percentage of authors from an institution, and the number of affiliated institutions per article.

The following are the top 10 Chinese institutions in terms of article output in 2020, and their indexes and global ranks.

10. Sun Yat-sen University

Article share index: 269.22

Article count index: 715

Global rank: No. 35