WorldHE NS Watch: Weekly University Highlights

As global competition in scientific research continues to intensify, publication output in Nature and Science has become one of the most widely recognized indicators of a university's research excellence, capacity for original innovation, and international academic influence.

WorldHE continuously tracks both the latest weekly publications and annual research output in Nature and Science by universities around the world, offering timely insights into the evolving global landscape of higher education and scientific research.

Click here to access the complete dataset of university NS publications.​

Weekly Global University NS Publications

Between 22 and 28 June 2026, 43 universities worldwide published research papers in Nature and Science. Universities from the United States and China Mainland each accounted for 14 institutions, substantially outpacing all other countries and regions and underscoring their strong research momentum. The United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia each had two universities represented, reflecting the continued strength of these established research nations.

Among the week's most notable contributors, Tsinghua University published one paper in Nature and two papers in Science, covering optical refrigeration, harmful algal blooms, and glycan structural biology. Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Tokyo each published two papers across the two journals.

Global University NS Rankings: The Past 12 Months

According to WorldHE's tracking of publications between 28 June 2025 and 28 June 2026, 71 universities worldwide published at least 10 papers in Nature and Science.

Among the top 10 institutions by total NS publications, the United States claimed five places, China Mainland secured three, and the United Kingdom took two, together forming the world's leading group of research-intensive universities.

Harvard University ranked first by a considerable margin with 143 papers, including 90 in Nature and 53 in Science. Remarkably, 139 of these publications listed Harvard as the corresponding-author institution, meaning Harvard researchers served as corresponding authors on nearly every paper. This highlights the university's exceptional ability not only to participate in high-impact international collaborations but also to lead them.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (96 papers) and Stanford University (94 papers) ranked second and third, respectively.

With 64 NS papers, the University of California, Berkeley placed fourth globally. Although its overall output trails the top three institutions, Berkeley stands out as the only university among the top 15 whose Science publications (36) exceeded its Nature publications (28), reflecting its long-standing strengths in astrophysics, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. The University of California, Los Angeles produced 39 NS papers, tying for ninth place.

Beyond the very top institutions, the depth of the U.S. research system remains equally striking. Among the 31 universities worldwide that published more than 20 NS papers, 18 are located in the United States, accounting for more than half of the total and reinforcing the country's dominant position in global scientific research.

Among universities in China Mainland, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences ranked fifth globally with 52 papers, making it the highest-ranked institution outside the United States. Tsinghua University followed in sixth place with 46 papers, while Peking University published 39 papers, tying with the University of California, Los Angeles for ninth.

Universities in China Mainland have firmly established themselves as the world's second-largest research force after the United States. Their combined publication output now significantly exceeds that of traditional research powers such as the United Kingdom and Germany, with 13 universities producing more than 10 NS papers over the past year.

In the United Kingdom, both the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge published 42 NS papers, tying for seventh place. Both institutions also recorded exceptionally high corresponding-author ratios (Oxford: 41 of 42 papers; Cambridge: 40 of 42), underscoring their strong leadership in initiating and directing internationally influential research projects.

Europe's broader research landscape remains distinguished by both depth and diversity. While numerous universities contribute consistently to Nature and Science, few individual institutions match the publication scale of Harvard or MIT. In Switzerland, ETH Zurich ranked 13th globally with 35 papers, while École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) produced 15 papers. In the United Kingdom, Imperial College London (20 papers) and University College London (17 papers) also maintained solid performances. Germany's LMU Munich (13 papers), Technical University of Munich (12 papers), and Humboldt University of Berlin (11 papers), together with France's Paris Sciences et Lettres University (16 papers) and Paris-Saclay University (10 papers), collectively represent the core strength of continental Europe's research ecosystem.

Click here to access the complete dataset of university NS publications.​

Methodology

For Nature, only publications classified as Article and Review Article were included. For Science, the analysis includes Research Article, Special-Issue Research Article, and Review.

The study covers papers formally published between June 18, 2025, and June 18, 2026.

Only the physically affiliated first author was counted as the first author. All corresponding-author affiliations were included, with each affiliated institution counted once. If the first-author institution and the corresponding-author institution were the same, the publication was counted only once for that institution.

Only formally published articles were included in the analysis. Advance online publications and papers in pre-publication status were excluded.