NC State Named a Research ‘Rising Star’

NC State ranks 31st in the world, and third in North America, on a list of 100 institutions that increased contributions to a selection of top academic journals from Jan. 1, 2012 to Dec. 31, 2015, according to a new report on research “rising stars” conducted by Nature.

The Nature Index tracks journal authors and contributors from some 8,000 institutions – including universities, national labs, institutes and other research-producing organizations – and shows NC State with a healthy increase in its contributions to top journals over the four-year period. NC State had a total of 223 articles authored or co-authored in those journals in 2015.

The College of Sciences played a big part in this ranking. Our faculty published numerous articles in prestigious journals tracked by the index, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature, Science, Physical Review Letters and Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

A strategic commitment to increasing research productivity factored into the rise, says Provost Warwick Arden.

“Increasing research productivity in top journals doesn’t happen by accident,” Arden said. “It takes great faculty who are experts in their fields and who are asking important questions. Over the past few years, we’ve made a commitment to recruit some of the best and brightest faculty to join our existing interdisciplinary teams to solve some of the globe’s most complex problems.”

The list of 100 institutions that increased contributions to top academic journals – the Nature Index 2016 Rising Stars supplement – can be found in the July 28 edition of the journal Nature.

More information about the Nature Index, including its methodology and the list of 68 top academic journals surveyed, can be found here: https://www.natureindex.com/faq.

(Original story at NC State News)