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31 October 2017 | news

New Zealand has been placed 28th in the world for its production of research articles in high-quality science journals. This is an improvement of one place from last year and puts us up there with rising research stars such as China, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway and Brazil.

The “Nature Index” ranks academic articles across 68 high quality natural research journals. Eight of the top 10 research institutions contributing to this outcome for New Zealand are universities or national research centres hosted by NZ universities (alongside two Crown research Institutes - GNS and NIWA).

This is a solid achievement on the back of an 11% increase in our article count. Overall, we’re up another 5% in our weighted fractional count (the weighted contribution of an author to an article, adjusted for the proliferation of journals in some fields).

By comparison, many of the leading countries have experienced reduced weighted output counts e.g. United States -5.9%; Germany -6.1%; United Kingdom -2.4%; Japan -9.5%; Canada -12.3%; Australia -2.9%.

Why does this matter?

It is a sign of the peer-assessed quality of our research capability in the natural sciences and is important for New Zealand’s international reputation as a research powerhouse.

Research makes a difference to New Zealand’s economy and prosperity. A recent NZIER report estimates that the stock of all knowledge generated by universities and adopted over time across the wider economy accounts for around 8.2% - 9.7% of GDP and that a 10% increase in higher education research spending (+$80m) will eventually (over 10-20 years) increase GDP by 1.75% to 1.84% (around NZ$4.5bn).

Links:

https://www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2017/country/all

http://www.universitiesnz.ac.nz/latest-news-and-publications/nzier-economic-impact-universities