WorldHE NS Watch: Stanford Leads With Three Nature & Science Papers in One Week

Against the backdrop of intensifying global competition in scientific research, publication output in Nature and Science has become one of the key benchmarks for evaluating universities’ capacity for original innovation and their international academic influence.

WorldHE continuously tracks the latest weekly and rolling 12-month Nature and Science publication data from universities worldwide, offering a dynamic view of the evolving global higher education and research landscape.

Click here to access the complete university NS publication data.​

Global University NS Publications: August 17–23, 2026

Global university output in Nature and Science returned to a high level last week, with 47 universities worldwide publishing NS papers.

Among them, 15 universities were from the United States, significantly ahead of other countries and regions. China Mainland accounted for 10 universities, maintaining its strong position in high-impact research output.

Stanford University delivered a particularly strong performance, publishing one Nature paper and two Science papers, with Stanford serving as the corresponding-author institution on all three publications.

University of Bristol, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Shanghai Jiao Tong University each published two NS papers during the week.

Global University NS Rankings: August 23, 2025–August 23, 2026

Over the past 12 months, 66 universities worldwide have published at least 10 papers in Nature or Science, highlighting the increasingly intense competition among the world’s leading research institutions.

Among the Top 10 universities by combined NS output, the United States accounts for six universities, while three universities from China Mainland maintain their positions. The United Kingdom has one university in the global Top 10.

Harvard University remains the clear global leader with 146 papers, including 95 in Nature and 51 in Science. Harvard ranks first among all universities in publication output in both journals. It was also the corresponding-author institution on 144 papers, meaning Harvard researchers served as corresponding authors on nearly every publication, demonstrating an exceptionally strong capacity for independently leading high-impact research.

MIT has also surpassed the 100-paper mark, with 106 papers, ranking second globally. Stanford University followed closely with 93 papers. Together, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford form an elite research cluster approaching or exceeding the 100-paper level.

The University of California, Berkeley ranked fourth with 66 NS papers. Although its overall output remains below that of the top three, Berkeley is the only university in the global Top 10 to publish more Science papers (34) than Nature papers (32).

The University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, a university in China Mainland, ranked fifth globally with 56 papers, making it the highest-ranked non-U.S. university.

The University of Cambridge ranked sixth with 47 papers, making it the only UK university in the global Top 10. Tsinghua University ranked seventh with 45 papers, followed by Peking University with 43.

Two universities in the University of California system—UC San Francisco and UCLA—tied for ninth with 38 papers each.

Click here to access the complete university NS publication data.​

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.

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.