Harvard University has once again triumphed in a research ranking system. This one lists the top institutions (including non-university research facilities) by how many research articles they published in Nature journals last year. Indeed, US institutions dominate the chart, filling 33 of the top 50 positions.

The ranking – a beta site – was published yesterday, and accompanies the latest update of a ranking system for Asia-Pacific institutions, which has been running for some time and has more options for analysis, including at the country level.

Simply counting research articles is a fairly basic measure, since institutions’ output will depend on how many researchers they have.

Other longer-running ranking systems weigh up multiple factors and extend to multiple journals, such as the ranking of worldwide universities by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University. Or they take factors beyond scientific publications into account, such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities made by the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, or the Times Higher Education’s ranking of best universities. You can read more on ranking systems and their evolution, in “University rankings smarten up” Nature 464, 16-17 (2010).

They all have one thing in common though: Harvard is at the top.