The journal “Nature” publishes its “Index 2019”, which reviews the global hierarchy of scientific research. While the CNRS remains well ranked, France experienced a marked decline in 2018.

Each year, Nature publishes a ranking of the most productive institutions and nations in science, based on an analysis of the number of articles published in 82 “prestigious” scientific journals. The United States is once again in the lead, but China continues a breakthrough marked by the strongest growth between 2017 and 2018. France, in sixth place, behind Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan respectively, is the country in the top 10 that has experienced the most significant relative decline, with a 7.6% decline. The highest ranked institution is the Chinese Academy of Sciences, ahead of Harvard, the Max Planck Society and the CNRS. But the French organism disappears from another so-called standardised classification, valuing quality rather than quantity of scientific production: Nature places the American laboratory Cold Spring Harbor at the top of the list, which reached 345th place unstandardised.