An article in the South China Morning Post has reported a “seismic shift” in global scientific leadership and noted the rise of Chinese chemistry research and the contrasting decline or stagnation of the field in American and European universities.
The main evidence for the rise of China is its domination of the most recent Nature Index ranking of high-impact chemistry papers.
However, an article in Chemistry World by Maria Burke argues that this may not be the whole story. Many leading journals are not included in Nature Index, and the number of papers coming out of China may be inflated by researchers chasing financial rewards for publishing in Index journals.
In addition, it is reported that some Chinese papers have high self-citation rates, and many are written with international co-authors.
Other subject rankings do not show quite the same Chinese dominance. For example, the URAP Chemical Sciences table shows Harvard in first place, as do the QS subject rankings. In contrast, first place in the Shanghai subject ranking goes to the University of California at Berkeley. However, the global chemistry rankings published by US News and National Taiwan University have Tsinghua University in first place.
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