Staff at the Vietnam's Institute of Vaccines and Biological Medical in the central
province of Khanh Hoa hold a mouse that would be used for testing drugs,
December 2019. Photo by VnExpress/Xuan Ngoc. 

Vietnam stands 10th among countries in the Asia-Pacific region for the number of research articles published on high-quality science journals in 2019. 

The 2020 Nature Index by Germany-based Nature Research uses two major metrics to track research output and collaboration: the article count, or simply count, and the fractional count, or share.

A country/territory or an institution is given one count for each article that has at least one author from that country/territory or institution. This is the case regardless of the number of authors an article has, and it means that the same article can contribute to the count of multiple countries/territories or institutions.

To glean a country’s, a territory’s or an institution’s contribution to an article, and to ensure they are not counted more than once, the Nature Index uses fractional count, or share, which takes into account the share of authorship on each article. The total share available per article is one, which is shared among all authors under the assumption that each contributed equally.

The 2020 index rank countries/territories and institutions based on the share, with data collected from January 1 to December 31 of 2019. It tracks by institution research published in 82 natural science journals, selected on reputation by an independent panel of leading scientists in their fields. 

For this year, Vietnam’s share is 16.35, and its count is 79.

Though having its share dropped 4.9 percent against the same period in 2018, Vietnam has maintained at the tenth place, a position it has secured since 2017.

Compared to its Southeast Asian peers, Vietnam stands only behind Singapore and Thailand on the ranking.

Asia-Pacific top 10 in the 2020 Nature Index. Photo by Nature Research.

Thailand is the only Southeast Asian that has made it to the top 10 rising countries/territories, which are ranked by change in adjusted share from 2015 to 2019, and led by China and Russia in the first and second spots.

China tops the Asia-Pacific region with 13,566 in share and 18,026 in count.

On the global scale, the U.S. takes the lead with a share of 20,152 and a count of 28,403. It is followed by China. Germany arrived third with 4,585 in share and 4,545 in count.

Nature Research is a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in science and medicine.