WorldHE NS Watch: Cambridge Leads With Three Nature Papers in One Week

As global competition in scientific research intensifies, publication output in Nature and Science has become a key benchmark for assessing 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 24–30, 2026

Global university output in Nature and Science remained strong last week, with 42 universities worldwide publishing NS papers.

Among them, 16 universities were from China Mainland and 13 from the United States, putting both well ahead of other countries and regions and underscoring their leading positions in high-impact research.

The University of Cambridge delivered a particularly strong performance, publishing three Nature papers in a single week. Cambridge was listed as both the first-author and corresponding-author institution on all three papers, covering frontier research in palaeoentomology, condensed matter physics, and meiotic recombination mechanisms.

Fudan University, the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, the National University of Singapore, the University of Arizona, Zhejiang University, and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences each published two NS papers, also posting strong results for the week.

Global University NS Rankings: August 30, 2025–August 30, 2026

Over the past 12 months, 67 universities worldwide have published at least 10 papers in Nature or Science, highlighting the increasingly intense competition among leading research institutions.

The composition of the global Top 10 remains unchanged by country distribution, with six universities from the United States, three from China Mainland, and one from the United Kingdom.

Harvard University continues to lead the global rankings by a wide margin, with 145 NS papers, including 95 in Nature and 50 in Science. Harvard ranks first among all universities in publication output in both journals.

MIT also remains above the 100-paper mark, with 106 papers, ranking second globally. Stanford University follows with 95 papers. Together, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford form an elite research cluster at or above the 100-paper level.

The University of California, Berkeley ranks fourth with 66 NS papers. Although its overall output trails the top three, Berkeley is the only university in the global Top 10 to publish more Science papers (35) than Nature papers (31).

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

The University of Cambridge ranks sixth with 50 papers, making it the only UK university in the global Top 10.

Peking University climbed one place from the previous reporting period, tying with Tsinghua University for seventh place with 43 papers each.

Two universities in the University of California system complete the Top 10: UC San Francisco ranks ninth with 39 papers, while UCLA ranks tenth with 35.

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.

Further Reading

WorldHE NS Watch: Harvard, MIT and Stanford Lead Global Nature and Science Output in August​

Global Nature and Science Leaders, H1 2026​