The Beijing skyline [Photo/VCG]

A supplement of Nature – a weekly international journal publishing the finest peer-reviewed scientific and technological research – released the 2022 nature index science city ranking, which analyzed the scientific and research contributions of major cities and metropolitan areas around the world in 2021.

The index tracks contributions to research articles published in 82 high-quality natural-science journals and provides absolute count and fractional share counts of article publications at the institutional and national levels.

Beijing topped the ranking, followed by the New York metropolitan area. Shanghai rose from fifth in 2020 to third this year, surpassing the Boston metropolitan area and the San Francisco Bay Area, which ranked fourth and fifth.

The rankings of other major Chinese cities also improved. Nanjing ranked eighth, up from 19th in 2015, while Guangzhou ranked 10th, up from the 14th in 2020. Four other major cities which ranked among the top 20 science cities for the first time were Wuhan (11th), Hefei (16th), Hangzhou (19th) and Tianjin (20th).

Cities in the United States still dominate the life science area, with New York, Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area and Baltimore-Washington ranking in the top 4 in terms of contributions to research articles in the area, followed by Beijing and Shanghai, which ranked fifth and sixth.

The publication also indicates that Beijing's research article contributions account for one fifth of China's total, and lists reasons why these cities rank so highly, such as the distribution of high-quality universities, research institutions, talent, policy and financial support from local governments, cultural diversity, living standards, scientific facilities and instruments, and industrial clusters.

Simon Baker, editor of the 2022 nature index-science city ranking, attributed the huge sci-tech progress made in Beijing and Shanghai to many factors, and said that their sci-tech research has influenced other cities in China.