The new Nature Innovation Index

It is a great pleasure to be associated with a prestigious Institute of the Weizmann Institute of Science (being a Member of the International Board). This morning the President Daniel Zajfman has sent to friends to the following email:

On August 9 2017, the scientific journal Nature released a new ranking related to the impact of science in society, or as they call it, the Nature Innovation Index. You can find the whole (very detailed) document here: https://www.natureindex.com/supplements/nature-index-2017-innovation/index

Unlike the Leiden ranking, which measures the impact of scientific research by counting the citations in scientific papers published by scientists worldwide (without including self-citations), the new Nature Innovation Index counts the citations in patents published (both by scientific institutions and industry) worldwide. In both cases, the number of citations is normalized to the size of the university. A simple way to explain the difference is perhaps to say that while the Leiden index tries to measure the impact of scientific work in general, the Nature Innovation Index tries to measure the impact of scientific work on the innovation market (or, roughly, real products on the market). Remember that all these types of indexes are only a rough indication of what they intend to measure, but they also provide some interesting information.

In the new Nature Innovation Index, the Weizmann Institute of Science ends up to be ranked among the top ten academic institutions worldwide (6th to be exact) and the first outside of the US. This new index compiles the data for 40 years of scientific research (between 1985 to 2015).

It is quite an accomplishment, the result of 68 years of keeping the Institute moving in the right direction, and we should all be very proud of it.