The Nature Index is an indicator of excellence of Nature Research, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, obtained from a database of the institutions of the authors of scientific articles published in 82 high-impact scientific journals in four major areas: Chemistry, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences and Physical Sciences. These journals, although they represent only 4-5% of those covering the natural sciences in the best known database, Web of Science, accumulate about 30% of the total citations.
There is an entry in the Nature Index both for large institutions such as CSIC, universities and their equivalents in other countries (CNRS in France, the German Max Planck Society, INFN in Italy, etc.) and for research centers. In the latter, the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC, CSIC/UV) is reflected, in such a way that its publications are assigned equally to the two institutions on which it depends: the CSIC and the Universitat de València.
The institutions are ranked using two factors (Count and Share), both calculated from the corresponding publications in any of the journals of the selection during a 12-month period. The default ranking uses the Share indicator, which is obtained by considering that all the authors of an article make an equal contribution. It thus favors more theoretical papers, where the number of authors is usually smaller. On the other hand, the Count factor is simply the total number of publications, so it prioritizes institutions with the highest scientific productivity.
In the latest update of the Nature Index, which takes as reference the period from November 1, 2021 to October 31, 2022, IFIC occupies the ninth position in Spain, in a ranking that leads the whole CSIC, an institution with more than 120 research centers throughout Spain. It is followed by the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), a foundation that brings together seven research centers in Catalonia, and several universities, including the Universitat de València in fifth place.
This ranking has been calculated by comparing the Share factor of all Spanish institutions, i.e., adding the proportional contribution of their authors to each publication, and not the overall number of scientific articles. Therefore, IFIC is currently the national research center with the highest Share factor in the Nature Index ranking.
IFIC is a center dedicated to research in nuclear, particle and astroparticle physics and its applications, both in medical physics and in other fields of science and technology. With a history dating back to the 1950s, IFIC is a pioneer in Spain in the investigation of the constituents of matter. It participates in international experiments such as those carried out at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), KM3NeT or FAIR, both considered priority scientific infrastructures for Europe.
