Nature Index expands to applied and social sciences with release of 2026 Research Leaders tables
10 June 2026
Nature Index now covers seven subject areas and adopts a recalibrated methodology
London | Beijing | New York | Tokyo 10 June 2026
Nature Index Research Leaders 2026: Overview of results for Japan
- In the country rankings, Japan maintained its 5th place, and its output (Share) increased by 9.0% from the previous year, marking the second largest increase among the top five countries, following China.
- The Japanese research institutions ranked in the top 100 global research institutions are the University of Tokyo (2026: 27th, 2025: 23rd) and Kyoto University (2026: 60th, 2025: 66th), with both institutions seeing an increase in their Share.
- Seven Japanese government institutions ranked in the top 100 of the global government institution rankings. RIKEN (10th), the National Institute for Materials Science (13th) and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (40th) ranked in the top 50.
- Seven Japanese companies ranked in the top 100 of the global corporate rankings. NTT (21st), Toyota (30th) and Takeda (45th) ranked in the top 50.
Today, the Nature Index has introduced updates to broaden its disciplinary coverage and refine its methodology with the release of the 2026 Research Leaders tables, marking a major step in the evolution of the database since its launch in 2014. The 2026 tables (based on full year 2025 data) show that China continues to lead globally and the East Asia region in general has outperformed others in the Nature Index.
For the first time, the Nature Index incorporates 17 applied-science journals and one conference and 15 social-science journals into the database. These new journals were selected following a global survey of more than 4,000 researchers on where they would choose to publish their most significant work. The Nature Index now tracks 177 journals plus one conference across seven subject areas, with 84% of them published outside Springer Nature.
The Nature Index has also adopted an article-level subject classification system, rather than assigning subject areas based on a journal’s primary discipline. Categorising each article’s subject individually helps to provide a more accurate reflection of disciplinary coverage in the database.
To support comparison, articles from the newly added journals have been incorporated for 2024 and 2025, and the updated subject classification has been applied retrospectively across the database.
“With expanded disciplinary coverage and a recalibrated methodology, the Nature Index now provides a more comprehensive and precise view of high-quality research output,” said Simon Baker, Chief Editor, Nature Index. “In terms of the results, we are continuing to see extremely strong performance from China, while there is also evidence that the wider East Asia region is growing output at a faster rate than Europe and North America.”
Key regional highlights:
- China remains the world’s leading contributing country, with research output rising 22.4% from 2024 to 2025, and it is the only county in the top ten to achieve double-digit growth.
- Japan, South Korea and India all rank among the global top ten, with Japan and South Korea each recording almost 10% growth in research output, outpacing the Western countries in the top ten.
- The remaining countries in the global top ten include four European nations (Germany, France, UK and Italy) and two North American nations (US and Canada). US and Germany are among the top five across all seven subject areas, with the US leading in health sciences and social sciences, and the UK ranking in the top five in all areas except chemistry.
Institutional performance:
- The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) retains its global No. 1 position overall and across most subject areas except health sciences and social sciences. Nine of the top ten institutions are based in China, up from eight last year, with Zhejiang University rising to No. 2.
- Harvard University moves to No. 3 overall but leads in health and social sciences, and nine of the top ten institutions in social sciences are US-based.
- In biological sciences, Harvard ranks No. 2, and the Max Planck Society ranks No. 3. European institutions perform strongly in physical sciences, with four in the top ten, including Max Planck Society (No. 2) and Italy’s National Institute for Nuclear Physics (No. 4).
- The Helmholtz Association for Nuclear Physics ranks No. 4 in Earth & environmental sciences.
All data and analysis for this year’s Research Leaders can be found here. The data is based on full-year 2025 data.
<Japan’s research capability in Nature Index Research Leaders 2026>
The 2026 Research Leaders release introduces several major updates, including the first-time addition of applied sciences and social sciences rankings. These are supported by 18 new applied sciences publications (17 journals and one conference) and 15 social sciences journals, with data backdated to 2024.
With this update, the Nature Index database now includes primary research articles from these new sources, bringing the total coverage to 178 publications and approximately 125,000 articles in 2025. This total comprises 75 natural science journals, 5 multidisciplinary journals, 65 medical journals, along with the newly added applied and social science titles.
As a result, the overview of the tables below reflects combined output across natural, health, applied, and social sciences. Because the newly added journal/proceedings articles have been incorporated into the data for 2024 and 2025, rankings differ from the 2025 Research Leaders rankings published last year. The 2025 rankings presented below contain the articles newly added to the database.
Country/territory tables for Nature Index Research Leaders 2026
Japan's 2026 Share was 3890.15, maintaining its 5th position in the country/territory ranking. Japan's Share increased by 9.0% from the previous year, marking the second largest increase among the top five countries, following China. The rankings of the top five countries and the changes in their Adjusted Share are as follows: 1st China (+22.4%), 2nd United States (+4.2%), 3rd Germany (+2.7%), 4th United Kingdom (+2.6%), and 5th Japan (+9.0%).
Nature Index Research Leaders 2026: Global Institution Rankings
Japanese research institutions ranked in the global top 100:
27th The University of Tokyo (2025: 23rd)
60th Kyoto University (2025: 66th)
The Share for Japanese institutions in the top 100 saw an increase of 9.7% for the University of Tokyo and 18.2% for Kyoto University.
Japanese research institutions ranked in the top 200 of the global research institution rankings:
117th University of Osaka (2025: 114th)
125th Tohoku University (2025: 167th)
168th Institute of Science Tokyo (2025: 161st)
169th RIKEN (2025: 141st)
185th Nagoya University (2025: 173rd)
Nature Index Research Leaders 2026: Global Government Institution Rankings
Japanese government institutions ranked in the top 100 of the global government institution rankings:
10th RIKEN
13th National Institute for Materials Science
40th National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
69th Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
70th National Institutes of Natural Sciences
81st High Energy Accelerator Research Organization
89th Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute
Nature Index Research Leaders 2026: Global Corporate Rankings
Japanese companies ranked in the top 100 of the global corporate rankings:
21st NTT
30th Toyota
45th Takeda
64th Honda
71st Sony
86th Hitachi
94th Mitsubishi Electric
* This ranking is as of 10 June 2026. The Nature Index database is updated regularly, so please refer to https://www.nature.com/nature-index/ to view the latest rankings.
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Note: Nature Index recognises that many other factors must be taken into account when considering research quality and institutional performance; Nature Index metrics alone should not be used to assess institutions or individuals. Nature Index data and methods are transparent and available under a creative commons licence at natureindex.com
Note to Editors
While the Nature Index Research Leader tables are a good indicator of high research output in the natural, health, applied and social sciences, readers should consider the findings alongside other scientific outputs such as data, software and intellectual property when considering research quality and institutional performance.
Nature Index is part of the Nature Research Intelligence portfolio, helping you navigate the world of high-quality scientific research, make informed research decisions and collaborate with confidence.
The Research Leaders tables are an annual release of data for the previous full calendar year (in this case 2025). Research Leaders tables from previous years are updated annually to reflect any changes to the database. This means rankings and metrics may differ from the table when first released.
About the Nature Index Metrics
Nature Index’s signature metric, Share, is a fractional count for an article allocated to an institution, city or country/region, that takes into account the proportion of authors on the article whose institutional affiliation is with that institution or location.
Adjusted Share takes account of annual variations in the total number of articles in the Nature Index when comparing Share across years.
The other main Nature Index metric is Count. A country/region or an institution is given a Count of 1 for each article that has at least one author from that country/region or institution.
For further explanation, please see natureindex.com/glossary.
About Nature Index
The Nature Index, part of Nature Research Intelligence, is a database of author affiliations and institutional relationships. The index tracks contributions to research articles published in 178 high-quality natural, health, applied and social science publications, across many different publishers, chosen by an independent group of researchers.
The Nature Index provides absolute and fractional counts of article publication at the institutional and national level and, as such, is an indicator of global high-quality research output and collaboration. Data in the Nature Index are updated regularly, with the latest 12-month window of data (known as the Current Index) updated monthly and made available under a Creative Commons licence at natureindex.com. Each year, a snapshot of data for the previous full calendar year (known as Research Leaders) is also released. For more information, see the Nature Index FAQs and Glossary. The database is compiled by Nature Research Intelligence, part of Springer Nature.
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