Beijing continues to rank as the leading science city in the Nature Index, while Shanghai and Nanjing, are in 3rd and 8th places respectively.

The index tracks contributions to research articles published in 82 high-quality natural-science journals. It provides absolute Count and fractional Share counts of article publication at the institutional and national level.

Beijing was followed by the New York Metropolitan Area and Shanghai, which climbed up from 5th place in 2020. The Boston Metropolitan Area in Massachusetts and San Francisco Bay Area, California ranked 4th and 5th respectively. Other Chinese cities also made rapid increase in output with Nanjing securing 8th place for two consecutive years and Guangzhou, 10th.

Nature index also shows the 40 biggest collaborations between cities in China and the United States by bilateral collaboration score for the year 2021. Although collaborations in China are mostly centered on either Beijing or Shanghai, a few other nodes are beginning to emerge - most notably in Nanjing.