Curtin University has been announced as the most collaborative of the Australian universities and the biggest Australian mover in the Nature Index results for 2016.
The Nature Index is a database of information collated from research articles published in a group of 68 high-quality natural science journals.
The Nature Index is built on an institution’s contributions to about 60,000 high-quality papers each year and counts both the number of papers and the relative contribution of the authors.
Professor Graeme Wright, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research, said Curtin was one of 11 Australian universities featured in the top 500 in the world.
“The Nature Index identifies that overall Curtin has very strong collaborations in Australia as well as key international collaborations. Curtin’s collaboration with CSIRO is a standout,” Professor Wright said.
“Further, it identifies Curtin as the most collaborative of the Australian universities included in the Index.
“Curtin’s top 10 collaborators consist of seven Australian universities, one Australian research organisation (CSIRO), and two institutions from China – the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Nanjing University of Technology.”
The Index uses article count, fractional count and weighted fractional count (WFC) to track affiliation data for individuals and develop performance and collaboration measures for institutions.
Based on 2015 data, Curtin’s WFC results were greatest for Earth and Environmental Sciences and Chemistry, and the largest number of publications (171 articles) were in the Physical Sciences.
“Curtin improved by a compound annual average of 22.2 per cent between 2012 and 2015, making the university the biggest Australian mover in the Index, and the third highest mover globally” Professor Wright said.
Curtin University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deborah Terry, said the papers included in the Nature Index are important contributors to Curtin’s Academic Ranking of World Universities performance which currently ranks the university at 270 in the world.
“Curtin is widely recognised for its achievements in applied research and to have our dedication to creating strong, high impact, collaborative research reflected by the publisher of the leading international scientific journal Nature, is a wonderful achievement,” Professor Terry said.
“The results are a testament to the strong contributions and achievements of Curtin researchers and postgraduate research students who are driven to undertake applied and globally relevant research that results in outcomes that benefit the broader community locally, nationally and globally.”
Visit www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2016/institution/academic/all to view the Nature Index ranking tables in full.
